Her blue eyes flashed disdain upon him, as she cried:
"How can you be so coarse and unfeeling, sir, showing so little respect to the memory of the wife dead but a few months?"
"She is as dead now as she will be in ten years hence!" he replied, with a grin that filled her with disgust; while he added, wheedlingly: "But I know how particular women folks are over these trifles, and I would have waited till spring before I spoke to you on the subject, but the fact is, the neighbors are gossiping about my keeping house with two pretty girls, and neither one any kin to me. So I thought I'd better marry one of them, and shut scandal's mouth. And as for Ailsa, I never liked her. She is always throwing up to me that her pa was a nicer man than I am. But as for you, Dainty, I worship the very ground you walk on, and I'll marry you to-morrow if you'll say the word."
"I can't marry you, sir. I—I—oh I am going right away, Mr. Sparks! I couldn't breathe the same air with a man that was so disrespectful to his first wife's memory as to court another in three months after her death!" the young girl cried, in passionate disgust, arousing such bitter spite that the rejected suitor cast courtesy to the winds, rejoining, hotly:
"Go, then, Miss Pert, and the sooner the better! Shall I call a wagon to take your trunk?" sarcastically.
"You know I have no trunk, Mr. Sparks, but I will pack my valise at once, and perhaps you will let it stay till I can take it away. I must rent a room somewhere first," she murmured.
"No; take it with you, I say. Your clothes might get contaminated breathing the same air with me!" he answered, angrily.
So presently Dainty went away in the teeth of a howling winter storm, without a penny in her purse, or a shelter for her head, while the little ones sobbed out to Ailsa when she returned that bad papa had driven sweet Dainty away.