“Looks like it,” returned her parent shortly. “Ye can have the law on him for this.”
“That wouldn’t be much comfort to I,” she retorted.
“What be goin’ to do then?”
“I d’ ’low I’ll go home-along,” said the forsaken bride with decision. “There bain’t no use in standin’ here for the folks to gawk at, an’ I mid just so well take up one o’ they fowls. I shouldn’t think any o’ Dan’l’s folks ’ud want to show their faces at our place.”
“I d’ ’low they won’t,” returned Mr. Cosser in a menacing tone, as though who should say, “they’d better not!”
“Let’s be steppin’ then,” said Phœbe. “You’d best look in at church and fetch mother. I’ll make haste home.”
“That there Dan’l o’ yourn be a reg’lar rascal!” shouted her father.
Phœbe, who had already proceeded some paces on her way, turned her head and called back over her shoulder: “I can’t say as how he’ve acted so very well!” Then she went on again.
When the baffled hunting party finally gave up the chase and returned to Cosser’s, partly with the hope of being commended for their zeal, which they felt must have atoned for all previous errors, partly to see how the forsaken bride bore herself, they found that damsel in her working dress, “salting down” a fine piece of beef.
“There’ll be a terr’ble lot o’ waste over this ’ere job,” she remarked, “but we must do our best to save all what we can.”