Rotha was silent, trying to keep temper and patience.
"And when I've got my room cleaned up," Mrs. Purcell went on with increasing heat, "I aint a goin' to have nobody walkin' in to make a muss again. This room's my place, and Mis' Busby nor nobody else hasn't got no right in it. I aint a goin' to be nobody's servant, neither; and if folks from the City o' Pride comes visitin' we, they's got to do as us does. I never asked 'em, nor Joe neither."
"Hush, hush, Prissy!" said her husband soothingly.
"I didn't—and you didn't," returned his wife.
"But Mis' Busby has the house, and it aint as if it warn't her'n; and the young woman won't make you no trouble she can help."
"She won't make me none she can't help," said Mrs. Purcell. "Us has to work, and I mean to work; but us has got work enough to do already, and I aint a goin' to take no more, for Mis' Busby nor nobody. You're just soft, Joe, and you let anybody talk you over. I aint."
"You've got a soft side to you, though," responded Joe, with a calm twinkle in his eye. "I'd have a rough time of it, if I hadn't found that out."
A laugh answered. The sudden change in the woman's lowering face astonished Rotha. Her brows unknit, the lines of irritation smoothed out, a genial, merry, amused expression went with her laugh over to her husband; and the talk flowed over into easier channels. Mr. Purcell even tried after his manner to be civil to the stranger; but Rotha's supper choked her; and as soon as she could she escaped from the table and the onions and went to her room again.
Evening was falling, but Rotha was not afraid any more. Her corner room under the roof seemed to her now one of the safest places in the world. Not undefended, nor unwatched, nor alone. She shut and locked her door, and felt that inside that door things were pleasant enough. Beyond it, however, the prospect had grown very sombre, and the girl was greatly disheartened. She sat down by the open window, and watched the light fade and the spring day finish its course. The air was balmier than ever, even warm; the lights were tender, the shadows soft; the hues in earth and sky delicate and varied and dainty exceedingly. And as the evening closed in and the shades grew deeper, there was but a change from one manner of loveliness to another; till the outlines of the tulip tree were dimly distinguishable, and the stars were blinking down upon her with that misty brightness which is all spring mists and vapours allow them. Yes, up here it was pleasant. But how in the world, Rotha questioned, was she to get along with the further conditions of her life here? And what would she become, she herself, in these coarse surroundings of companionship and labour? Either it will ruin me, or it will do me a great deal of good, thought she. If I do not lose all I have gained at Mrs. Mowbray's, and sink down into unrefined and hard ways of acting and feeling, it will be because I keep close to the Lord's hand and he makes me gentler and purer and humbler and sweeter by all these things. Can he? I suppose he can, and that he means to do it. I must take care I put no hindrance. I had better live in the study of the Bible.
Very, very sorrowful tears and drooping of heart accompanied these thoughts; for to Rotha's fancy she was an exile, for an indefinite time, from everything pleasant in the way of home or society. When at last she rose up and shut the window, meaning to strike a light and go on with her Bible study, she found that in the disagreeable excitement of the talk at supper she had forgotten to provide herself with lamp or candle. She could not go down in the dark through the empty house to fetch them now; and with a momentary shiver she reflected that she could not get them in the night if she wanted them. Then she remembered—"The darkness and the light are both alike to Thee." What matter, whether she had a lamp or not? The chariots of fire and horses of fire that made a guard round Elisha, were independent of all earthly help or illumination. Rotha grew quiet. As she could do nothing else, she undressed by the light of the stars and went to bed; and slept as sweetly as those who are watched by angels should, the long night through.