“But then I’ve done nothing for you, nothing at all. I didn’t make you all you are, and earn for you all you have. I haven’t worked my fingers off day in and day out for you. Oh, no; but you don’t owe me anything for that, certainly not. Only I’d like to know where you’d be now if it hadn’t been for me, and where you’d go now if it wasn’t for me, wanting to give to every missionary and shiftless creature you can hear of, and to dress a pauper up in silk and make a lady of her! One thing I guess, you’d find the poor-house at the end, and that pretty soon. But then that’s all the thanks I get.” “Now, Almiry, you know better,” expostulated Mr. Hagood. “But I’ll tell you one thing,” she continued cutting him short, “it won’t be healthy for you to be a-settin’ her up against me, and I’ll see that you don’t have much chance to do it. And I’ll tell you another thing you may both depend on, she shall never go to school now, not a single day. I taught once, I can teach her, and I’ll begin to-morrow. And one thing more, as long as I have my health and strength I don’t propose to be run over in my own house by any miserable little upstart, as she’ll find out to her sorrow if she ever tries it again.” Mrs. Hagood had raised her voice with the intention that the words should reach Posey’s ears, who in return shook her small clenched fist towards the closed door, and was only restrained from calling out the words which rose to her lips by the lesson she had recently and painfully gained, that in a contest of strength she was no match for Mrs. Hagood, and was sure to be the sufferer. Mr. Hagood sighed as he rose from his almost untasted meal and went out about his evening chores. And as Posey’s gust of passion ebbed away she sighed also, not only for the supper she had been deprived of, whose savory whiffs had intensified her always healthy appetite, but from the realization, of which this going supperless was an evidence, how mortally she had angered Mrs. Hagood. For, as she well knew, the battle between them was not over; instead it was just begun; that dominant will would not rest till it had crushed and broken the will which had dared to oppose it, and Posey aching and smarting, but rebellious and unyielding, lay and looked at the ceiling and felt that it was indeed a painful way on which she must enter with the morrow, and in which her one friend, however innocent, must also suffer. These gloomy forebodings of the future grew as the darkness thickened in her little room; then a slight sound at her window attracted her attention, and softly raising the sash she found on the sill outside, a long row of juicy harvest apples. Tears filled her eyes, but they were such as she had not shed before that day, and she kissed the red-cheeked apples and with a rush of love and gratitude for the unspoken kindness they expressed.