The warm water stood in May’s eyes. But the weak voice, thrilling with excitement, reminded her of the danger of an excess of feeling upon the disjointed system. She spoke lightly:
“Oh, your father would have looked out for your soul!”
“Would he?”
The accent of intensest acrimony shocked the listener, corroborated as it was by the bitterness of scorn that wrung the small face.
In a second Hester caught herself up.
“They say that cobblers’ wives go barefoot. Ministers have so little time to spare for the souls of their families that their children are paganed. If it wasn’t for their wives and their wives’ sisters, the forlorn creatures would not know who made them.”
It was a plausible evasion, but it did not efface from May’s mind the disdainful outburst and the black look that went with it. Both seemed so unnatural, even revolting, to a girl whose father stood with her as the synonym for nobility of manhood, that she could not get away from the recollection for the rest of the evening. This was before Mr. Wayt’s arrival, and sharpened May’s appreciation of the little by-play between Hester and her parent.
His departure at nine o’clock was succeeded by Hester’s at ten, and, as was their habit, March and his sister took her home by the path across the orchard. The night was sultry; the moon lay languid under swathes of gray mist. She looked warm, and the stars near her faint and tired. Low down upon the horizon were flashes of purple sheet lightning. The town had kept the Fourth patriotically, and the odor of burned paper and gunpowder tainted the stirless air.
“The grass is perfectly dry,” said May, stopping to lay her hand upon the mown sward. “That should be a sign of a shower.”
“There is always rain on the night of the Fourth of July,” returned March abstractedly.