"Jest so!" said Miss Beswick. "If it hadn't been for the war! He had made his first payments, and would have met the rest as they came due, no doubt of it. But the war broke out, and he left all to sarve his country. Says he, 'I'm an able-bodied man, and I ought to go,' says he. His business was as important, and his wife and children was as dear to him, as anybody's; but he felt it his duty to go, and he went. They didn't give no such big bounties to volunteers then as they do now, and it was a sacrifice to him every way when he enlisted. But says he, 'I'll jest do my duty,' says he, 'and trust to Providence for the rest.' You didn't discourage his goin',—and you didn't incourage him, neither, the way you'd ought to."
"My! what on 'arth, Miss Beswick!—--Seems to me you're takin' it upon yourself to say things that are uncalled for, to say the least! I can't understand what should have sent you here, to tell me what's my business, and what a'n't, this fashion! As if I didn't know my own duty and intentions!" And Mr. Ducklow poured his tea into his plate, and buttered his bread with a teaspoon.
"I s'pose she's been talking with Sophrony, and she has sent her to interfere."
"Mrs. Ducklow, you don't s'pose no such thing! You know Sophrony wouldn't send anybody on such an arrant; and you know I a'n't a person to do such arrants, or be made a cat's-paw of by anybody. I a'n't handsome, not partic'larly; and I a'n't wuth my thousands, like some folks I know; and I never got married, for the best reason in the world,—them that offered themselves I wouldn't have, and them I would have had didn't offer themselves; and I a'n't so good a Christian as I might be, I'm aware. I know my lacks as well as anybody; but bein' a spy and a cat's-paw a'n't one of 'em. I don't do things sly and underhand. If I've anything to say to anybody, I go right to 'em, and say it to their face,—sometimes perty blunt, I allow. But I don't wait to be sent by other folks. I've a mind o' my own, and my own way o' doin' things,—that you know as well as anybody. So, when you say you s'pose Sophrony or anybody else sent me here to interfere, I say you s'pose what a'n't true, and what you know a'n't true, Mrs. Ducklow!"
Mrs. Ducklow was annihilated; and the visitor went on.
"As for you, Mr. Ducklow, I haven't said you don't know your own duty and intentions. I've no doubt you think you do, at any rate."
"Very well! then why can't you leave me to do what I think 's my duty? Everybody ought to have that privilege."
"You think so?"
"Sartin, Miss Beswick; don't you?"
"Why, then, I ought to have the same."