"No, not since I saw you that day," said Ann. "But he's all right, Mrs. Bruce, as I told you, and prospering. I didn't come out to speak of him. I've decided to drop that law-suit against Gus Willard. He can keep his pond where it is and run his mill on."
"Oh, you don't mean it, surely you don't mean it, Ann!" the old woman cried. "Why, Gus was just back from Darley last night and said your lawyers said thar was to be no hitch in the proceedings; but, of course, if you say so, why—"
"Well, I do say so," said Ann, in a tone which sounded strange and compromising even to herself. "I do say so; I don't want your husband to lose his job. Luke wouldn't like for you to suffer, either, Mrs. Bruce."
"Then I'll go at once and tell Willard," said the older woman. "He'll be powerful glad, Ann, and maybe he will think as I do, an' as Luke always contended against everybody, that you had a lots o' good away down inside of you."
"Tell him what you want to," Ann answered, and she returned to her house.
On the morning she was expecting Mrs. Waycroft to return, Ann rose even before daybreak, lighting an abundant supply of pine kindling-wood to drive away the moist darkness, and bustling about the house to kill time. It was the greatest crisis of her rugged life; not even the day she was wedded to Joe Boyd could equal it in impending gravity. She was on trial for her life; the jury had been in retirement two days and nights carefully weighing the evidence for and against the probability of a simple, untutored country girl's acceptance of certain luxuries dear to a woman's heart, and would shortly render a verdict.
"She will," Ann said once, as she put her ground coffee into the tin pot to boil on the coals—"she will if she's like the ordinary girl; she won't if she's as stubborn as Joe or as proud as I am. But if she does—oh! if she does, won't I love to pick out the things! She shall have the best in the land, and she can wear them and keep them in the log-cabin her father's giving her till she will be willing to come here to this comfortable house and take the best room for herself. I don't know that I'd ever feel natural with a strange young woman about, but I'd go through it. If she didn't want to stay all the time, I'd sell factory stock or town lots and give her the means to travel on. She could go out and see the world and improve like Luke King's done. I'd send her to school if she has the turn and isn't past the age. It would be a great vindication for me. Folks could say her shiftless father took her off when she was too young to decide for herself, but when she got old enough to know black from white, and right from wrong, she obeyed her heart's promptings. But what am I thinking about, when right at this minute she may—?" Ann shrugged her shoulders as she turned from the cheerful fire and looked out on her fields enfolded in the misty robe of early morning. Above the dun mountain in the east the sky was growing yellow. Ann suddenly grew despondent and heaved a deep sigh.
"Even if she did come here in the end, and I tried to do all I could," she mused, "Jane Hemingway would begin on her and make it unpleasant. She'd manage to keep all civilization away from the girl, and nobody couldn't stand that. No, I reckon the jig's up with me. I'm only floundering in a frying-pan that will cook me to a cinder in the end. This life's given me the power of making money, but it's yellow dross, and I hate it. It isn't the means to any end for me unless—unless—unless my dau—unless she does take Mrs. Waycroft's offer. Yes, she may—the girl actually may! And in that case she and I could run away from Jane Hemingway—clean off to some new place."
Ann turned back to the fireplace and filled her big delft cup to the brim with strong coffee, and, blowing upon it to cool it, she gulped it down.
"Let's see"—her musings ran on apace—"milching the three cows and feeding the cattle and horses and pigs and chickens will take an hour. I could stretch it out to that by mixing the feed-stuff for to-morrow. Then I could go to the loom and weave up all my yarn; that would be another hour. Then I might walk down to the sugar-mill and see if they are getting it fixed for use when the sorgum's ripe, but all that wouldn't throw it later than ten o'clock at latest, and there would still be two hours. Pete McQuill is easy on horses; he'll drive slow—a regular snail's pace; it will be twelve when he gets to the store, and then the fool may stop to buy something before he brings her on."