“Sadie!” said the teacher warningly, “what language!”
“I mean they quarrelled, an’ she don’t speak to him any more.”
“Why, how dreadful!”
“An’ pa he’s awful cross,—and she won’t eat when he does, an’ I haf to wait on table.”
“I believe I’ll go down and see her this noon,” said Lily to herself, as she divined a little of the state of affairs in the Burns family.
Sim was mending the pasture fence as Lily came down the road toward him. He had delayed going to dinner to finish his task and was just about ready to go when Lily spoke to him.
“Good-morning, Mr. Burns. I am just going down to see Mrs. Burns. It must be time to go to dinner—aren’t you ready to go? I want to talk with you.”
Ordinarily he would have been delighted with the idea of walking down the road with the schoolma’am, but there was something in her look which seemed to tell him that she knew all about his trouble, and beside he was not in good humor.
“Yes, in a minnit,—soon’s I fix up this hole. Them shoats, I b’leeve, would go through a keyhole, if they could once git their snoots in.”
He expanded on this idea as he nailed away, anxious to gain time. He foresaw trouble for himself. He couldn’t be rude to this sweet and fragile girl. If a man had dared to attack him on his domestic shortcomings, he could have fought. The girl stood waiting for him, her large, steady eyes full of thought, gazing down at him from the shadow of her broad-brimmed hat.