‘I do not think there is any chance of his paying unless he be compelled. He has satisfied his conscience. He put the money away for you, and as it did not reach you the loss is yours, and you must bear it.’
‘But good heavens! that is no excuse at all. The base hypocrite! He is a worse thief than the man who stole the money. He should sell the fields he bought with my loan.’
‘They were fields useful to him for the stretching of the cloth he wove in his factory.’
‘Are you trying to justify him for withholding payment?’ asked Mr. Jordan. ‘He is a hypocrite. What was he to cry out against the strange blood, and to curse it?—he, Ezekiel Babb, in whose veins ran fraud and guile?’
Barbara looked wonderingly at him through the veil of tears that obscured her sight. What did he mean?
‘He is an old man, papa, but hard as iron. He has white hair, but none of the reverence which clings to age attaches to him.’
‘White hair!’ Mr. Jordan turned the scythe, and with the point aimed at, missed, aimed at again, and cut down a white-seeded dandelion in the grass. ‘That is white, but the neck is soft, even if the head be hard,’ said Mr. Jordan, pointing to the dandelion. ‘I wish that were his head, and I had cut through his neck. But then——’ he seemed to fall into a bewildered state—’the blood should run red—run, run, dribble over the edge, red. This is milky, but acrid.’ He recovered himself. ‘I have only cut down a head of dandelion.’ He reversed the scythe again, and stood leaning his arm on the back of the blade, and staying the handle against his knee.
‘My dear father, had you not better put the scythe away?’
‘Why should I do that? I have done no harm with it. No one can set on me for what I have cut with it—only a white old head of dandelion with a soft neck. Think—if it had been Ezekiel Babb’s head sticking out of the grass, with the white hair about it, and the sloe-black wicked eyes, and with one cut of the scythe—swish, it had tumbled over, with the stalk upwards, bleeding, bleeding, and the eyes were in the grass, and winking because the daisies teased them and made them water.’