She replied convulsively that she didn't want to know.
"But you've got to know. It's for the good of your soul. Hold up your head now, and I'll whisper it in your ear. It isn't a word for housetop use," and, creeping close to her, he uttered a ghostly "Murder!"
She opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came from it, and in terrified, fascinated speechlessness she began slowly backing away from him, propelling her chair on its hind legs around the table and followed by him airily perched on another.
Micah had gone crazy. There was no doubt about it. He had no thought of marriage. Her best plan was to escape from the room without irritating him. Now he was silly, and, with his head on one side, was speaking in a foolish voice, "Cousin Hippolyta, who sits behind the parlour window curtains, pretending to knit, and casting sly looks at the old widowers and bachelors as they go by?"
These were pretty sane words for an insane man, for they described her favourite occupation, and she blushed slightly as she looked away from him.
"Who counts 'em up head by head," he went on, remorselessly, "and reckons up chances of marriage. Who makes eyes at the old men, Hippolyta?"
"Hold your tongue, Micah," she said, hysterically.
"Who goes further than that?" he inquired, in a voice so low that it dropped into an accusing growl. "Who has a prime favourite among the old men? Who forgets what the good Book says about, 'She that looketh on a man and planneth on his sick wife's death is a murderess in her heart.'"
At this merciless exposure of the most hidden secret of her breast, scarcely breathed even to herself, Mrs. Prymmer collapsed. In her progress around the table she had reached the point she started from. Here the upper part of her body subsided in a heap on the table, and she burst into a flood of tears.
"Good girl," said Captain White, patting the back of her head. "I've been wanting to see you do this for many a day. There's nothing so improving as to get down in the gutter with the rest of mankind. You've been too stuck on your own virtues, Hippolyta."