Martha stood still for some moments with one hand on the tea-kettle's shining lid. Then she spoke. "The tent can be put up here in our yard," she said.
"Mother and I will help Mrs. Cavers. I'll ask father and mother, but I'm sure they'll be willing. They never went back on a neighbour. We must give Libby Anne her chance."
The doctor looked at her with admiration. "Will you tell Mrs. Cavers,
Martha? You're the best one to tell her."
"All right," she answered. "I will tell her."
The doctor drove away with a great reverence in his heart for the quiet Martha. Pearl had told him about Martha's hopes and fears, and the great ambition she had for an education. "She won't have much time to improve her mind now," he said to himself. "She never hesitated, though. She may not be acquainted with the binomial theorem, but she has a heart of gold, and that's more important. I wonder what Arthur is thinking. He's foolish to grieve for the tow-haired Thursa when queens are passing by."
When Martha went to the stable to consult with her father she found that he had been having trouble with the hired man, the one who, according to Mr. Perkins, "ate like a flock of grasshoppers." Ted had been milking a cow, when his employer came in to remonstrate with him about wasting oats when he was feeding the horses. Ted made no reply until he had the pail half-full. Then suddenly he sprang up and threw it over his employer.
"You howld w'eat-plugger," he cried, "you drove Bud aw'y with your meanness, but you can't put hon me. Do your bloomin' chores yourself!"
When Martha reached the barn she found her father wiping his clothes with an empty grain-sack. He told her what had happened.
"Jes' think, Martha, that beggar did not say a word until he got the pail half full, and then he soused it onto me, good hay-fed new milk, and from the half-Jersey too—he didn't care. This'll set ye back one churnin' too. But he won't dare to ask me for this week's wages. I paid him up just a week ago—that'll more than settle for the milk. So it ain't as bad as it might be." He was shoving a red handkerchief down the back of his neck, trying to locate some of the lost milk. "You wouldn't think that half a pail of milk would go so far, now, would you, Martha? but I tell ye he threw it strong."
Martha suggested dry clothes, and when he was dressed in them she told him about Libby Anne.