“Oh, I will, I will—in fact, I feel some better already.” There was another incipient chuckle far down in Mrs. Porter's throat, but she coughed it away. “I really feel like I'm going to get well. I'll sleep like a log to-night. You'd better turn in yourself, daughter.”
“All right, mother—good-night.”
The next morning, shortly after breakfast, as Mrs. Porter was attending to some hens' nests in the barn-yard, Hillhouse crept out of the thicket just beyond the fence and approached her. He was quite pale and nervous, and bent his head and shoulders that the high staked-and-ridered rail-fence might hide him from the view of the house.
“I've been out here in the woods for an hour watching your back-door,” he said. “I was in hopes that I'd see Cynthia moving about in the diningroom or kitchen. You see, I don't know yet whether she went off last night or stayed. I haven't closed my eyes since I saw you.”
“Well, you have got it bad,” Mrs. Porter laughed, dryly, “and you needn't worry any more. I reckon I spilled ink all over my record in the Lamb's Book of Life, but I set in to succeed, and I worked it so fine that she let me go out and send him away for good and all.”
“Oh, Sister Porter, is that true?”
“It's a great deal truer than anything that passed my lips last night,” Mrs. Porter answered, crisply. “Brother Phillhouse, if I ever get forgiveness, there is one of the commandments that will have to be cut out of the list, for I certainly broke it all to smash. I had a separate lie stowed away in every pore of my skin last night, and they hung like cockle-burs to every hair of my head. I wish I was a Catholic.”
“A Catholic?” Hillhouse repeated, his eyes dancing in delight, his sallow skin taking on color.
“Yes, I'd sell our horses and cows and land, and give it to a priest, and tell him to wipe my soul clean with the proceeds. I feel happy, and I feel mean. Something tells me that I'd have made an expert woman thief—perhaps the greatest in the history of all nations.”
“What sort of fibs did you tell, Sister Porter?” Hillhouse was smiling unctuously and rubbing his long hands together.