Our courting
lasted a week and you were here four times."
"We haven't much time, Hannah," he reminded her. "It was right hard for
me to see you that often. There was a smart of things you were doing,
too."
"The more fool!" she exclaimed.
Again his resentment promised to leap beyond control. He clenched his
hands and stared with contracted eyes at the floor.
"Well," he articulated finally, "we're promised anyhow; that can't be
denied. I have your word."
"Yes," she admitted, "but chance that I went with Phebe doesn't mean
I'd never come back."
"It would mean that you'd never come back," he paraphrased her.
"Maybe I would know better," she answered quickly. "I'm sorry, Calvin.
I didn't go to be so sharp. Only I don't know what's right," she went
on unhappily.
"It isn't what's right," he corrected her, "but what you want. I wish
Phebe had stayed away a little longer."
"There you go again at Phebe!" she protested.
He replied grimly; "Not half what I feel."
In a dangerously calm voice she inquired, "What's the rest then?"
"She's a trouble-maker," he asserted in a shaking tone over which he
seemed to have no command; "she came back to Greenstream and for no
reason but her own slinked into our happiness. Your whole family--even
Hosmer, pretending to be so wise--are blind as bats. You can't even see
that Phebe's hair is as dyed as her stories. She says she is on the
stage, but it's a pretty stage! I've been to Stanwick and seen those
Parisian Dainties and burlesque shows.
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