“Sit down, for mercy's sake, Eben!” said Abigail. She sat down herself as she spoke, and crossed her little slender feet and hands with a quick, involuntary motion, which was usual to her. “It is as I told you,” said she. Abigail Merritt, good comrade of a wife though she was, yet turned aggressively feminine at times.
The Squire sat down. “What do you mean, Abigail?”
“I mean—that I wish that Edwards boy had never entered this house.”
“Abigail, you don't mean that Lucina— What do you mean, Abigail?” finished the Squire, feebly.
“I mean that I was right in thinking some harm would come from that boy being here so much,” replied his wife. Then she went on and repeated in substance the innocent little confession which Lucina had made to her in her chamber.
The Squire listened, his bearded chin sunken on his chest, his forehead, under the crest of yellow locks, bent gloomily.
“It seems as if you and I had done everything that we could for the child ever since she was born,” he said, huskily, when his wife had finished. His first emotion was one of cruel jealousy of his daughter's love for another man.
Abigail looked at him with quick pity, but scarcely with full understanding. She could never lose, as completely as he, their daughter, through a lover. She had not to yield her to another of the same sex, and in that always the truest sting of jealousy lies.
“So far as that goes, it is no more than we had to expect, Eben,” she said. “You know that. I turned away from my parents for you.”
“I know it, Abigail, but—I thought, maybe, it wouldn't come yet a while. I've done all I could. I bought her the little horse—she seemed real pleased with that, Abigail, you know. I thought, maybe, she would be contented a while here with us.”