"I can never be his wife," she faltered. She paused, turned her face away, and said, in a low tone: "I am not good enough. I deliberately flirted with Langdon Chester. I used to love to have him say sweet things to me, and I led him on. I've no excuse to make. If I had been good enough to be the wife of a man like Luke King, I'd never have been caught in that trap, even to save my mother, for if I'd acted differently he'd never have done what he did. It's all my fault. If Langdon Chester is upset and bent on trouble, I'm the cause of it. If it results in unhappiness to the—to the noblest and best man I ever knew, it will all be my fault. You needn't try to comfort me, Mrs. Boyd. I tell you I'd rather die than have Luke King know all that has happened, and God knows I'd never be his wife otherwise. So that is the end of it."
Ann was silent for several minutes, then she said: "I feel like you are wrong somehow, and yet I don't exactly know how to make you see it my way. We must both study over it. It's a problem, and no little one. There is one thing certain: I'll never advise you to start married life on deception of any kind. I tried that, with the best intentions, and it was the worst investment I ever made."
[XXXIV]
During this conversation Sam Hemingway had returned to the house from his field. He had an armful of white, silky, inside leaves of cornhusks closely packed together, and these he submerged in a washtub full of water, in the back-yard, placing stones on them to hold them down.
"What are you about now?" his sister-in-law asked, as she appeared in the doorway of the kitchen.
"Now, what could a body be about when he's wetting a passle of shucks?" he answered, dryly. "I'm going to make me some stout horse-collars for spring ploughing. There ain't but one other thing a body could make out of wet shucks, and that's foot-mats for town folks to wipe their feet on. Foot-mats are a dead waste of money, for if fewer mats was used, women would have to do more sweeping and not get time to stand around the post-office watching men as much as they do. I reckon it's the way old daddy Time has of shifting women's work onto men's shoulders. I'll bet my hat that new-fangled churn that fellow passed with yesterday was invented by a man out o' pure pity for his sex."
"I was wondering where Virginia went to," Jane said, as if she had not heard his philosophical utterances. "I've been all round the house looking for her, even to the barn, but she's disappeared entirely."
Sam shrugged his shoulders significantly. He placed the last stone on the submerged husks and drew himself up erect. "I was just studying," he drawled out, "whether it ud actually do to tell you where she is at this minute. I'd decided I'd better not, and go on and finish this work. From what I know about your odd disposition, I'd expect one of two solitary things: I'd expect to see you keel over in a dead faint or stand stock-still in your tracks and burn to a cinder from internal fires."
"Sam, what do you mean?" The widow, in no little alarm, came towards him, her eyes fixed steadily on his.
"Well, I reckon you might as well know and be done with it," he said, "though you'll be sure to let them pies burn afterwards. Jane, your only child is right now a-sitting on the bench at the gum spring, side by side with Ann Boyd. In fact, as well as I could see from the rise I was on in my potato-patch, I'd 'a' took my oath that they was holding hands like two sweethearts."