Henry looked reproachfully at his wife. “I didn't quite deserve that from you, Sylvia,” he said, slowly.
Sylvia looked at him a moment. Her face worked. Then she glanced around to be sure nobody saw, and leaned over and touched the shoulder of Henry's mohair coat with a little, skinny hand. “Henry,” she said, pitifully.
“What, Sylvia?”
“You know I didn't mean anything. You've always been generous about money matters. We 'ain't never had ill feeling about such a thing as that. I shouldn't have spoke that way if I hadn't been all wrought up, and—” Suddenly Sylvia thrust her hand under her white apron and swept it up to her face. She shook convulsively.
“Now, Sylvia, of course you didn't mean a blessed thing. I've known you were all wrought up for a long time, but I haven't known what about. Don't take on so, Sylvia.”
A little, hysterical sob came from Sylvia under the apron. Her scissors fell from her lap and struck the stone slab on which Henry was sitting. He picked them up. “Here are your scissors, Sylvia,” said he. “Now don't take on so. What is it about? What have you got on your mind? Don't you think it would do you good to tell me?”
“I wish,” sobbed Sylvia, “that Abrahama White had left her property where it belonged. I wish we'd never had a cent of it. She didn't do right, and she laid the burden of her wrong-doing onto us when she left us the property.”
“Is that what's troubling you, Sylvia?” said Henry, slowly. “If that's all,” he continued, “why—”
But Sylvia interrupted him. She swept the apron from her face and showed it grimly set. There was no trace of tears. “That ain't troubling me,” said she. “Nothing's troubling me. I'm kind of nervous, that's all, and I hate to set still and see foolishness. I don't often give way, and I 'ain't nothing to give way for. I'm jest all wrought up. I guess there's going to be a thunder-tempest. I've felt jest like it all day. I wish you'd go out in the garden and pick a mess of green corn for supper. If you're a mind to you can husk it, and get that middling-sized kettle out from under the sink and put the water on to boil. I suppose they'll be home before long now. They ain't quite got to going without their victuals.”
Henry rose. “I'd admire to get the corn,” said he, and went around the house towards the kitchen. Left to herself, Sylvia let her work fall in her lap. She stared at the front yard and the street beyond and the opposite house, dimly seen between waving boughs, and her face was the face of despair. Little, commonplace, elderly countenance that it seemed, it was strengthened into tragedy by the terrible stress of some concealed misery of the spirit. Sylvia sat very stiffly, so stiffly that even the work in her lap, a mass of soft muslin, might have been marble, with its immovable folds. Sylvia herself looked petrified; not a muscle of her face stirred. She was suffering the keenest agony upon earth, that agony of the spirit which strikes it dumb.