Harris laced up his boot. Then he started upstairs.
"Don't be too hard on her, John," urged his wife, with a little catch in her voice.
"I won't be too hard on anybody," he replied curtly. "It's a strange thing you wouldn't see that she did as she was told. I suppose I have to plug away in the field until dark and then come in and do another half-day's work because my women folk are too lazy or stubborn to do it themselves."
If this outburst was intended to crush Mary Harris it had a very different effect. She seemed to straighten up under the attack; the colour came back to her cheeks, and her eyes were bright and defiant.
"John Harris," she said. "You know better than to say that your women folk are either lazy or stubborn, but there's a point where imposition, even the imposition of a husband, has to stop, and you've reached that point. You didn't have to stay in the field until dark. There's another day coming, and the ploughing'll keep. It isn't like the harvest. It was just your own contrariness that kept you there. You fired the best man you ever had to-day, in a fit of temper, and now you're trying to take it out on us."
Harris looked at her for a moment; then, without speaking, he continued up the stairs. The difficulties of his position were increasing; it was something new to be assailed from the bosom of his own family. He felt that he was being very unfairly used, but he had no intention of shrinking from his duty as a husband and father, even if its discharge should bring pain to all of them.
He found Beulah in her room, ostensibly reading.
"Why are the cows not milked?" he demanded.
"I thought I made it clear to you at noon that they wouldn't be milked by me," she answered, "and there didn't seem to be anybody else hankering for the job."
"Beulah," he said, trying to speak calmly, "don't you think this nonsense has gone far enough?"