“Dear, to be sure, father, how you frightened me!” she exclaimed, stammering.
“Who gave ye leave to make a dryin’-ground o’ my archard?” resumed the farmer, striding up to her. “These here apple-trees wasn’t made to hang clothes on. Whose clothes be these?”
All the pretty bloom fled from Alice’s face; for a moment she stood gaping, unable to find an answer; then all at once she laughed—or tried to laugh.
“Why, what a to-do,” she cried. “Whose clothes be they? Well, they be man’s clothes, as ye can see—an’ you be the only man about this here place, bain’t ye?”
An ominous pause ensued, during which Farmer Bolt, turning to the clothes-line, closely examined the garments thereon.
“I’d be sorry to wear that shirt,” he remarked; “and when did ye ever see me in trousers like them? They’m your ’usband’s—that’s what they be; an’ what be tellin’ lies about ’em for?”
Alice, who had always been known as a “spiritty maid,” fired up at this.
“I think it ’ud be a queer thing if I was to name my husband to ye,” she responded. “Ye can never find a good word to say for him. ’Tis natural enough for me to be unwillin’ to let his name pass my lips.”
“What be doin’ washin’ his clothes? I thought he’d emmygrated?” pursued the father suspiciously.
“They are his clothes, then,” said Alice, with flashing eyes. “There, they are his clothes; I’ll not deny it. I’ve a-washed ’em in the water what the Lard gave us all free, an’ I be a-dryin’ of ’em in the air what belongs so much to him as to you, father. An’ this here bit o’ rope’s what was tied round my own box, so I d’ ’low he bain’t beholden to ye.”