“Why don’t they fix it?” asked Lucy naively.
“Yes, why don’t they? You may well ask that!” returned Ellen with scathing bitterness. “Why don’t they? Because they’re too mean an’ stingy—that’s why. Because they think that by lettin’ it go to ruin an’ makin’ my place look like a dump heap, they can drive me 74 to spend my money to do it, so’st they can save theirs. Because they’re such lyin’, deceitful critters they actually pretend the wall don’t belong to ’em anyhow—that it’s mine! Mine! That’s why. So they leave it there, lookin’ like the devil’s own playground, hopin’ that some day I’ll get so sick of seem’ it that way that I’ll build it up.”
She choked for breath.
“But I shan’t,” she went on. “I never shall, long’s I live. If I was to be drawn an’ quartered I wouldn’t do it. No. If Martin Howe thinks he’s the only person in the world who can hold out for a principle, he’s mistaken. I’ve got a will that can match his, match his an’ beat it, too, an’ he’ll learn it sometime. I can put up with seein’ that wall just as long as he can.”
A light of understanding began to break in on Lucy’s bewilderment.
“I don’t see——” she began, then halted before her aunt’s stern gaze.
“You don’t see what? Out with it.”
“I don’t see why you couldn’t build it up together.”
“You don’t!” sneered Ellen contemptuously, “You’d help those Howes fix their 75 wall, I s’pose, same’s you’d go an’ buy their eggs.”
The withering intonation of the words echoed through the room.