“Yes, I am.”
Then all Lois' horror and terror manifested themselves in one cry—“O mother!”
Mrs. Field never flinched. “If you want to act so an' feel so about it, you can,” said she. “Your mother is some older than you, an' she knows what is right jest about as well as you can tell her. I've thought it all over. That fifteen hundred dollars was money your poor father worked hard to earn. I lent it to your uncle Edward, an' he lost it. I never see a dollar of it afterward. He never paid me a cent of interest money. It ain't anything more'n fair that I should be paid for it out of his father's property. If poor Esther had lived, the money'd gone to her, an' she'd paid me fast enough. Now the way's opened for me to get it, I ain't goin' to let it go. Talk about it's bein' right, if it ain't right to stoop down an' pick up anybody's just dues, I don't know what right is, for my part.”
“Mother!”
“What say?”
“You ain't going to live here in this house, and not go back to Green River?”
“I don't see any need of goin' back to Green River. This is a 'nough sight prettier place than Green River. Now you're down here, I don't see any sense in layin' out money to go back at all. Mandy'll send our things down.”
“You don't mean to stay right along here in this house, and not go back to Green River at all?”
“I don't see why it ain't jest as well. You'd better take off your things an' lay down a little while on that sofa there, an' get rested.”
Lois seldom cried, but she burst out now in a piteous wail. “O mother,” sobbed she, “what does it mean? I can't— What does it mean? Oh, I'm so frightened! Mother, you frighten me so! What does it mean?”