He began drawling his words again, as he always did when he had got himself under control.
"I suppose ye're insinuatin' ye don't like it here—don't like what ye're pore ol' Father c'n do fur ye?"
Her look of contempt would have cut short another man.
"Ye—wantta—go?" he finished.
She nodded mutely. And at that he flared at her terribly.
"It's like ye," he shouted, "like yere mother, like all the Perkinses. Word-breakers! cowards! shirkers!"
The words seared. The careful articulation of the afternoon was gone.
"Promised—if I sent ye to school, ye'd stay here winters to look after ye're pore ol' Father—didn't ye?" He looked at her through narrow, reddish lids, where she had backed against the door. "Didn't ye?" he repeated. "But soon's he's done fur—soon's his money's gone—"
"Stop!" she cried. "Stop i—" Her breath caught.
He stared at her, the words shaken from him by the sheer force of her. She had not moved, but, somehow, as she stood there against the unvarnished door facing him, fists at her side, eyes brilliant, she appeared to tower over him.