“I’m sure you have a story to tell me,” Judith heard Marion say, in the tone Roger Kenney called “wheedling.”
“My story is all hard work, privation, and ingratitude,” was the ready response.
As Aunt Affy sewed a tear fell on her coarse work, which Judith tried not to see.
Judith sewed diligently, wondering the while how she could make a turning-point for herself.
“Yes,” groaned the voice across the hall, “my past is not pleasant to dwell on, the present is full of contradictions and being opposed, and the future—well, I hope I am a Christian.”
“I don’t believe you are,” whispered Judith softly over her rags.
A heavy step on the sod under the bedroom window brought sudden color to Aunt Affy’s old cheeks; with her sister’s groanings in her ears she was meditating if it were her duty to ask Cephas to go away again. Was the Lord asking her to choose between the two?
Pushing back his straw hat and leaning his shirt-sleeved arms on the window-sill, the old man stood, with his lover’s eyes on the delicate, sweet face of the woman he had loved thirty years.
“Well, Affy, how’s things?” he asked, joyously.
“Just as usual,” she half sighed.