Not knowing how to answer this rebuff, he tried to cover his embarrassment by exclaiming authoritatively, "Haw, Bright!" whereupon the team slewed to the left and crowded him into the ditch.
Soon he began again.
"Ye might set on, Liz," he pleaded.
"Yes, I might," said she, with what she considered rather withering smartness; "but I ain't a-goin' to."
"Ye'll be tired afore ye git home," he persisted, encouraged by finding that she would talk back at him.
"James-Ed A'ki'son," she declared, with emphasis, "if ye think I'm a-goin' to be beholden to you fer a lift home, ye're mistaken, that's all."
After this there was silence for some time, broken only by the rattling and bumping of the cart, and once by the whir of a woodcock that volleyed across the road. Young Atkinson chewed the cud of gloomy bewilderment. At length he roused himself to another effort.
"Liz," said he, plaintively, "y' ain't been like ye used to, sence ye come back from the States."
"Ain't I?" she remarked, indifferently.
"No, Liz, ye ain't," he repeated, with a sort of pathetic emphasis, as if eager to persuade himself that she had condescended to rebut his accusation. "Y' ain't been like ye used to at all. Appears like as if ye thought us folks in the Settlement wasn't good enough fer ye now."