Quite by accident Marion learned of her father’s reason for assenting to Silas Johnson’s suit. He had given Silas a mortgage on the farm for five hundred dollars in order to obtain the money to loan to Tom Wilders.
Now, when the mortgage was to be foreclosed and the old people turned out, Tom, the dutiful son-in-law, not only refused to pay up, but he also refused to even harbor his wife’s parents.
There was still a mystery about the loan of the money, but neither Mrs. Marlowe nor Samantha dared to question their husbands, and there was not a scrap of paper to prove the transaction.
“Ef Marion wuz here, she’d sift this thing tew the bottom,” thought poor, weak Mrs. Marlowe, as she sat and wept, and then for, perhaps, the first time in her life, she turned and bitterly berated her husband.
“Yew’ve done it all, Joshuy!” she said, lowering her apron. “Yew tied Samanthy hand and foot tew the stingiest critter this side er Jordan, an’, what’s more, yew’ve driv both Marion and Dollie from their own father’s door—yew’ve done it, an’ some day yew’ll answer fer it, Joshuy!”
Her husband paused in his nervous pacing, and stared at her wonderingly. There was a red flush of shame creeping over his wrinkled forehead.
“I’ve never said it before, being I ain’t dared, but I’ll say it now ef yew kill me, Joshuy Marlowe! I’m tew full tew keep still! I jest can’t, an’ that’s all there is about it! Yew’ve been tew hard on yewr own flesh an’ blood, an’ yew’ve been tew hard on me—an’ we air goin’ tew the Poor Farm as a jedgement upon us—yew fer bein’ so hard, an’ me fer keepin’ still an’ mindin’ ye!”
Before such a flood of honest condemnation, Joshua Marlowe stood silent; he had not dreamed that his wife harbored such bitterness toward him.
With hardly a pause for breath, she went on speaking, rolling the corners of her apron in both hands and rocking her body back and forth in the torrent of her misery.
“Ef it warn’t fer yewr hardness, they would be here now, Joshuy—Samanthy, Marion an’ Dollie! But yew turned ’em out! Yew did, Joshuy Marlowe! Yew giv Samanthy tew Tom an’ disowned poor Dollie, an’ yew’d a-turned Marion out ef yew’d a-dared, but yew dassent! That’s one of yewr children that wasn’t afeard of yew, Joshuy! Oh, Marion! Marion! I wish yew wuz here this minute!”