“Oh, that—that is it!” exclaimed Cicely. I could see, through my peephole, how flames passed through her face and then that she became deadly white. I could see how her bosom heaved, how her hands trembled as she tried to continue with the potatoes, but was unable to do anything because of her wounded finger.
Suddenly she took up the pan, thrust past Will, and threw the contents into the pig-pail. “You have made me spoil all,” she said, and burst into tears.
“Crying! What for?”
“That is it. You have already lost your heart to some other girl, and now you come to say——”
“Yes, that I am going to the parson to have my banns called.”
“Who is it?” she asked, looking at him, her weeping arrested, and she as one of stone.
“If I say it shall be you, what will you say?”
She tried to speak, could not, turned, put up her hand against the wall, brushed it down once, twice, again, impatiently. She could not bring the word out that she wished to say.
Will remained waiting. No answer came.
“Ciss,” he said, “it shall not be you. Any other rather. No—you, never!”