In those weeks that followed--weeks of refusal, and then struggle, and then acceptance, and last of all adjustment--Miss Harriet found old Annie's companionship almost intolerable. She was very unreasonable with her, very harsh even; but all she asked was solitude, and solitude Annie would not give. She ran at her sister's heels like a dog; sat looking at her with frightened eyes in the bad hours that came with relentlessly increasing frequency; came whimpering to her bedside on those exhausted mornings when Harriet would scourge her poor body onto its feet and announce that she was going out. "These four walls smother me," she used to say; "I must get out-of-doors." Sometimes it seemed as if the big, kind nature that had borne the pin-pricks so patiently all these years had reached the breaking-point, and another day or another hour of poor old Annie's foolish love would cause it to burst out in frantic anger: "It hurts, sister?" "Yes, Annie; but never mind. If I could only get out-of-doors I wouldn't mind." "Oh, sister, don't let it hurt." "Can't help it, Annie. Now, don't think about it, that's a good girl. Maybe I can get out to-morrow a little while." "But I can't bear it." "Got to, my dear. Come, now, run away. Go and see your chickens." "Sister, I can't bear it." "Annie, you drive me wild. Augustine--oh, she can't hear. _Augustine!_ you must take Miss Annie away. Annie, if you say another word--" "I'm the oldest and I have a right to talk. Why don't you smell your big bottle? When the squirrels smell it they are not hurt." "Well, I'm not a squirrel. Annie, if you stay another minute, I'll--I'll-- Oh, for Heaven's sake, let me alone!" She could stand it, she told herself, if she was alone. For though she finally accepted the fact, her own weakness she could not accept. "I am ashamed," she told William King, angrily. "But there's nothing to be ashamed of," Willy King protested, in his kind way. "Dear Miss Harriet--" "Hold your tongue. Nothing to be ashamed of? I guess if your body had put your soul in a corner, with its face to the wall--I guess you'd be ashamed. Yesterday I--I-- Well, never mind. But my body got me down, I tell you--got my soul down. Isn't that something to be ashamed of? Don't be an ass, William. I'm ashamed." It was this consciousness of her own weakness that made her hold herself aloof from her friends.