He didn't say anything, but he put his foot on the potato and smashed it.
"If I had to be shut in here with you one more day," she went on, "I'd hate you."
"Why the one more day?" he asked, without looking up.
But she didn't answer him. She was in the worst kind of a temper; she threw the ribbon down, and coming over, lifted the lid of my basket and looked in.
"Ham again!" she exclaimed ungratefully. "Thanks so much for remembering us, Minnie. I dare say our dinner to-day slipped your mind!"
"I wonder if it strikes you, Minnie," Mr. Dick said, noticing me for the first time, "that if you and Sam hadn't been so confounded meddling, that fellow Pierce would be washing buggies in the village livery-stable where he belongs, and I'd be in one piece of property that's as good as gone this minute."
"Egg salad and cheese!" said Mrs. Dick. "I'm sick of cheese. If that's the kind of supper you've been serving—"
But I was in a bad humor, anyhow, and I'd had enough. I stood just inside the door and I told them I'd done the best I could, not for them, but because I'd promised the old doctor, and if I'd made mistakes I'd answer for them to him if I ever met him in the next world. And in the meantime I washed my hands of the whole thing, and they might make out as best they could. I was going.
Mrs. Dick heard me through. Then she came over and put her hand on mine where it lay on the table.
"You're perfectly right," she said. "I know how you have tried, and that the fault is all that wretched Pierce's. You mustn't mind Mr. Carter, Minnie. He's been in that sort of humor all day."