“I'm not going to tell you, whether I am or not, David!”
Her words began harshly, but ended with his name tenderly, pitifully uttered.
She called after him as he moved from her door, heavily, weakly, more like an old man than she had noted him yet, “I'll talk to Jane, and whatever I say will be for her good.” She watched him out of sight from where she was working; then she went to the door, with some mind to call more kindly yet to him; but he was not to be seen, and she went back to her ironing, and ironed more swiftly than before, moving her lips in a sort of wrathful revery. From time to time she changed her iron for one at the hearth, which she touched with her wetted finger to test its heat, and returned to her table with an unconscious smile of satisfaction in its quick responsive hiss. In her movements to and fro she spoke to the baby, which babbled inarticulately up to her from the floor. Then she seemed to forget it, and it was in one of these moments of oblivion that she was startled by a sharp cry of terror from it. A man was looking in at the door.
X
The man stood with one foot on the log doorstep outside and the other planted on the threshold of the cabin.
Nancy came toward him with her iron held at arms' length before her. “What do you want?” she demanded fiercely.
“Give me to drink,” he said, with a grin.
“Go round to the well,” she answered.
The man bent his body a little forward, and looked in, but he did not venture to lift his other foot to the threshold. “Where is your husband?” he asked.