"How do you know I shall ever marry him at all? I never said I would; and I'm sure I won't now—I'm sure I won't. I might have done so before—before, when I didn't understand; but, now that you have shown me what he is, I won't be the staff to prop his mean snobbishness. Let him get pedigree and breeding somewhere else; he shall not buy them from me, big as his price is!"
Dismay appalls the family at this unexpected turn of affairs; the unfortunate orator and elucidator stands staring with open mouth, not able to produce a protesting sound. Aunt Jo it is who briskly and successfully comes to the rescue. She has taken no part in the discussion, but has sat at the window apart in a soothing daydream, her heart singing a canticle of joy that the days of her bondage are at last closing in—sat, living through in happy prospective the coming year, established once more in her neat, comfortable little house, where the day worked itself out from sunrise to sunset with the soothing regularity of clock-work, where the voice of insulting tradesmen never penetrated, where all was peace, neatness, comfortable economy, and respectability.
"Robert, Pauline, Henry," she cries sharply, roused by Addie's disastrous wrath, "what are you tormenting the poor child about, talking of things you do not in the least understand? Don't you see that she is perfectly worn out with exhaustion and excitement and the pain of her foot. Come to bed, child, come to bed; you're not in a state to be up. I'll make you a nice hot drink that will send you to sleep at once. Here's your stick. What a grand one it is! Where did you get it? From Mr. Armstrong? Well, it's like himself, strong, reliable, and stout-limbed."
CHAPTER VII.
"How does your ankle feel this morning?"
"Better—much better, thank you. In a day or two it will be quite strong again."
Miss Lefroy is seated in a moldy old summer-house at a corner of the farm-house garden, shelling a dish of peas, little Emma Higgins, her landlady's youngest but two, helping her with zealous dirty fingers. Unable any longer to bear the horsehair hardness of the parlor sofa and the stuffiness of the house, she has escaped hither, heedless of her aunt's protestations.
Mr. Armstrong stands leaning against the rotting woodwork, supporting a starved clematis-stalk, making the whole building creak and quiver with the weight of his brawny shoulders.