“I declare I didn’t expect to be treated this way, or I shouldn’t ’a come to see you. I’ll send one o’ the boys next time, an’ mebbe you’ll treat ’em better. You hain’t so much as invited me in to take a seat!”
Lottie turned indignantly away, and, without giving the solicited invitation, retreated to the sitting-room.
Here she found Mrs. Highton, seated in the big arm-chair, looking about her with a self-satisfied air.
As Lottie and Eva entered, she exclaimed:
“Well, you an’ Mart’s been gittin’ acquainted, I reckon. I heerd you laughin’ together. He’s mighty friendly, an’ easy to git acquainted with. We all be, fer that matter. Some folks is so kind o’ stuck up, or somethin’, that it takes a month o’ Sundays to git to know ’em. But the Hightons ain’t that way!”
Lottie made no reply to these remarks. She was troubled and disgusted, and did not know how to get rid of her unwelcome visitors. She sank, silently, upon the couch by the window.
Mrs. Highton stopped her rocking, and turned her chair so that she could face her listeners, and resumed:
“Mart an’ me’s bin talkin’ ’bout the way you children’s situated here. Mrs. Green told me all about it, afore she went away. An’ she says to me, says she, ‘Them poor, motherless, orphant children hadn’t orto be livin’ over there by theirselves,’ says she; ‘but the oldest girl’—that’s you, I reckon”
nodding at Lottie—“‘is mighty sot an’ determined, an’ is bound to stick to the place.’
“So Mart an’ me, we’ve been talkin’ it over, an’ we concluded to come an’ hev a talk with you. He says to me, says he, ‘If the children want to go to their relations, we’ll buy their housell stuff—fer we’re a-needin’ the things—an’ they kin take the money an’ go. But if they’d ruther stay, why, let ’em stay.’”