"Walter never thought of making love to me," returned the astonished and slightly indignant Jessie; "and if he had it wouldn't have been anybody's business but mine and father's. He isn't a boy, either. He's a splendid-looking man. Pa thinks the world of him; and he knows, too, about that old affair, which wasn't half as bad as Will and Mrs. Reeves seem to think. Walter told it to me last night up in the pines, and I'll tell it to you. It wasn't murder nor anything like it. Now, even I shouldn't wish it said that any of my friends were hung."
"Hung!" repeated the old lady. "Who said anybody's friends were hung? It's false!" and the red mark around the lip wore a scarlet hue.
"Of course it's false," answered Jessie. "That's what I said. Nobody knows for certain that he stole, either," and forgetting her own belief, founded on her father's, Jessie tried to prove that Seth Marshall was as innocent as Walter himself had declared him to be.
"Whether he's guilty or not," returned Mrs. Bartow, "you are going home, and you're to have nothing to say to Walter. It would sound pretty, wouldn't it, for Mrs. Reeves to be telling that Jessie Graham liked a poor charity boy?"
Jessie was proud, and the last words grated harshly, but she would stand by Walter, and she replied:
"Mrs. Reeves forever! I believe you'd stop breathing if she said it was fashionable. I wonder who she was in her young days. Somebody not half so good as Walter, I dare say. I mean to ask Aunt Debby. She has lived since the flood, and knows the history of everybody that ever was born in New England, or out of it either, for that matter."
Mrs. Bartow was not inclined to doubt this after her own experience, and as in case there was anything about Mrs. Reeves, she wished to know it, she secretly hoped Jessie would carry her threat into execution. Just then they were summoned to supper, and following her granddaughter into the pleasant sitting-room, Mrs. Bartow frowned majestically upon Walter, bowed coldly to the other members of the family, and then took her seat, thinking to herself:
"The boy has a little of the Bellenger look, and, if anything, is handsomer than William."
The tea being passed, with the biscuit and butter and honey, and the cheese contemptuously refused by the city guest, Jessie said to Aunt Debby:
"Did you ever know anybody by the name of Gregory? That was Mrs. Reeves' maiden name, wasn't it, grandma?"