"Is he going to stay to tea?"
Emily would set an extra cup, on the chance of it. "You'd best go and find your ma, Miss Deleah; she's gone to the cemetery, and have no right to be there alone."
"I am going; and, Emily, I won't come into the house any more while that man is there; and mama shall not."
"Now you're going to make a heap of fuss!" the worried Emily said. "I never see sech goin's on as we get nowadays. No peace anywhere."
"I'm not making any fuss. Only, you must tell Bessie to get rid of Mr.
Boult before we come home."
He did not go till Bessie, plump and attractive, a pink rose in her bosom, had poured out tea for him, but he had been gone half an hour when the mother and daughter returned. Mrs. Day, fagged with her long walk, was comforted by the holding of Deleah's warm young arm, strengthened by Deleah's brave talk. There would be another hard fight, but Deleah would not go away any more, they would fight together.
"We can live on almost nothing, mama—you and I."
There would be Bessie, her mother reminded her; but Deleah seemed indisposed to take Bessie into her calculations. She unfolded her scheme of the little house and the little school of quite little children such as she could teach.
"We shall be far happier than we have ever been in the shop. Some eggs and milk for you and me, and now and then a little butcher's meat for Emily. What will it cost! Surely we can manage that, mama."
"You are forgetting that there is Mr. Boult to settle with. That horrible proposition of his must be somehow answered, Deleah."