“Oh, Charlotte! I'm afraid you hadn't better,” wailed Sarah.
Charlotte stood before them both. “Look here, father and mother,” said she. “I've never gone against your wishes in my life, but now I'm going to. It's my duty to. I was going to marry him once.”
“You didn't marry him,” said Cephas.
“I was willing to marry him, and that amounts to the same thing for any woman,” said Charlotte. “It is just as much my duty to go to him when he's sick; I am going. There's no use talking, I am going.”
“You needn't come home again, then,” said her father.
“Oh, Cephas!” Sarah cried out. “Charlotte, don't go against your father's wishes! Charlotte!”
But Charlotte shut the door and hurried up-stairs to her room. Her mother followed her, trembling. Cephas sat still, dangling his stocking-feet clear of the floor. He had an ugly look on his face. Presently he heard the two women coming down-stairs, and his wife's sobbing, pleading voice; then he heard the parlor door shut; Charlotte had gone through the house, and out the front door.
Sarah came in, sniffing piteously. “Oh, Cephas! don't you be hard on the poor child; she felt as if she had got to go,” she said, chokingly.
Cephas got up, went padding softly and cautiously in his stocking-feet across the floor to the sink, and took a long drink with loud gulps out of the gourd in the water-pail.
“I don't want to have no more talk about it; I've said my say,” said he, with a hard breath, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.