"Mother, please leave me alone for to-day, anyway," Dolly pleaded. "I—I'm not a fool. Take Ann down-stairs. I—I can't stand that noise. It makes me desperate. I hardly know what to do or say."
"I just asked her to tell me the truth." Ann sat up, holding her pillow in her lap as for comfort, her eyes red with rubbing. "But she won't say a word, when all this time I've been counting on—"
"Well, I'm going down and see about supper," Dolly said, desperately. "Father and George have stopped work and they will be hungry."
Her mother tried to detain her, but she went straight down the stairs. Mrs. Drake crept stealthily to the door, peered after her daughter, and then, heaving a sigh, she stood before the girl on the bed.
"Now," she said, grimly, "out with it! Tell me all you know about this thing—every single thing!"
"But, mother"—Ann's eyes fell—"I promised-"
"It don't make no difference what you promised," Mrs. Drake blurted out. "This ain't no time for secrets under this roof. I want the facts. If you don't tell me I'll get your pa to whip you."
Half an hour later, as Tom Drake trudged across the old wheat-field back of the barn, his scythe on his shoulder, he met his wife at the outer fence of the cow-lot. There she stood as still and silent as a detached post.
"Whar's your bucket?" he asked, thinking she had come to milk the cow, which was one of her evening duties.
"I'm goin' to let it go over to-night," she faltered. Then she laid a stiff hand on her husband's sweat-damp sleeve. "Tom Drake," she gulped, "I'm afraid me an' you are facin' the greatest trouble we've ever had."