Anna Carroll sat down on the nearest chair and laughed hysterically.
Mrs. Carroll stared at her. “What are you laughing at, Anna?” said she, with a little tone of injury. “I don't see anything very funny. It is a lovely day, and I wanted to go to drive, and it would do you good. I don't see why people act so because they are not paid. I didn't think it of Martin.”
“I'll go out and see if he has stirred yet,” cried Eddy, and was off, with a countenance expressive of the keenest enjoyment of the situation.
Out in the stable, beside the great door through which was a view of the early autumn landscape—a cluster of golden trailing elms, with one rosy maple on a green lawn intersected by the broad sweep of drive—sat the man in a chair, and whittled with a face as imperturbable as fate. Carroll stood beside him, talking in a low tone. He was quite pale. Suddenly, just as the boy arrived, the man spoke.
“Why in thunder, sir,” said he, with a certain respect in spite of the insolence of the words—“why in thunder don't you haul in, shut up shop, sell out, pay your debts, and go it small?”
“Perhaps I will,” Carroll replied, in a tone of rage. His face flushed, he raised his right arm as if with an impulse to strike the other man, then he let it drop.
“Sell the horses, papa?” cried Eddy, at his elbow, with a tone of dismay.
Carroll turned and saw the boy. “Go into the house; this is nothing that concerns you,” he said, sternly.
“Are the horses paid for, papa?” asked Eddy.
“I believe they ain't,” said the man in the chair, with a curious ruminating impudence. Carroll towered over him with an expression of ignoble majesty. But Eddy had made a dart into a stall, and the tramp of iron hoofs was suddenly heard.