She never knew how near her gentle manner and pleasant voice came to winning the day at once. Champers’ first impulse was to grant her anything she asked for; his second was to refuse everything; his third, his ruling principle always, was to negotiate to his own advantage. He dropped his eyes and began to play for time.
“I don’t know as I can help you at all, madam,” he said, half sympathetically. “The supplies and money is about gone, except what’s promised, and, well—you ought to have come sooner. I’d a been glad to help you, but I thought you Grass River folks had about everything you needed for the winter.”
“Oh, Mr. Champers,” Virginia cried, “you know that nobody could foretell the coming of the plague. We were as well off as hundreds of other settlers this dry summer before the grasshoppers came.”
“Yes, yes, madam, but the supplies is gone, about.”
“And you cannot promise that any more will be coming soon?” The pathos of the woman’s voice was appealing. 111
“If you could only understand how poor and how brave those settlers are!”
“I thought your man had some little means to get you and him away, if he’d use it that way.”
The sorrow of failure here and the suffering that must follow it made Virginia sick at heart. A homesick longing suddenly possessed her; a wish to get away from the country and forget it altogether. And Champers was cunning enough to understand.
“You’d just like to get away from it, now, wouldn’t you?” he asked persuasively.
“I surely would, when I think of the suffering there will be,” Virginia replied. “Our staying won’t help matters any.”