“You wait and see if she's two years behind!” exclaimed Eva, who had just returned from the shop, and had entered the room bringing a fresh breath of December air, her cheeks glowing, her black eyes shining.
Eva was so handsome in those days that she fairly forced admiration, even from those of her own sex whose delicacy of taste she offended. She had a parcel in her hand, which she had bought at a store on her way home, for she was getting ready to be married to Jim Tenny. “I tell you there don't nobody know what that young one can do,” continued Eva, with a radiant nod of triumph. “There ain't many grown-up folks round here that can read like her, and she's studied geography, and she knows her multiplication-table, and she can spell better than some that's been through the high-school. You jest wait till Ellen gets started on her schoolin'—she won't stay in the grammar-school long, I can tell you that. She'll go ahead of some that's got a start now and think they're 'most there.” Eva pulled off her hat, and the coarse black curls on her forehead sprang up like released wire. She nodded emphatically with a good-humored combativeness at the visiting woman and at her sister.
“I hope your cheeks are red enough,” said Fanny, looking at her with grateful admiration.
The visiting woman sniffed covertly, and a retort which seemed to her exceedingly witty was loud in her own consciousness. “Them that likes beets and pinies is welcome to them,” she thought, but she did not speak. “Well,” said she, “folks must do as they think best about their own children. I have always thought a good deal of an education myself. I was brought up that way.” She looked with eyes that were fairly cruel at Eva Loud and Fanny, who had been a Loud, who had both stopped going to school at a very early age.
Then the rich red flamed over Eva's forehead and neck as well as her cheeks. There was nothing covert about her, she would drag an ambushed enemy forth into the open field even at the risk of damaging disclosures regarding herself.
“Why don't you say jest what you mean, right out, Jennie Stebbins?” she demanded. “You are hintin' that Fanny and me never had no education, and twittin' us with it.”
“It wa'n't our fault,” said Fanny, no less angrily.
“No, it wa'n't our fault,” assented Eva. “We had to quit school. Folks can live with empty heads, but they can't with empty stomachs. It had to be one or the other. If you want to twit us with bein' poor, you can, Jennie Stebbins.”
“I haven't said anything,” said Mrs. Stebbins, with a scared and injured air. “I'd like to know what you're making all this fuss about? I don't know. What did I say?”
“If I'd said anything mean, I wouldn't turn tail an' run, I'd stick to it about one minute and a half, if it killed me,” said Eva, scornfully.