They hung about her in their white nightgowns before replying, as if they considered their answer might lie in her look.
“I don’t know—I don’t know,” murmured Retty Priddle. “I want to hate ’ee; but I cannot!”
“That’s how I feel,” echoed Izz and Marian. “I can’t hate her. Somehow she hinders me!”
“He ought to marry one of you,” murmured Tess.
“Why?”
“You are all better than I.”
“We better than you?” said the girls in a low, slow whisper. “No, no, dear Tess!”
“You are!” she contradicted impetuously. And suddenly tearing away from their clinging arms she burst into a hysterical fit of tears, bowing herself on the chest of drawers and repeating incessantly, “O yes, yes, yes!”
Having once given way she could not stop her weeping.
“He ought to have had one of you!” she cried. “I think I ought to make him even now! You would be better for him than—I don’t know what I’m saying! O! O!”