It was Esther Hagadorn who had come in! There was a moment's awkward silence, and then the school-teacher began hurriedly to speak. “I saw you were alone from the veranda—I was so nervous, it never occurred to me to rap—the curtains being up—I—I walked straight in.” As if in comment upon this statement, M'rye marched across the room, and pulled down both curtains over the veranda windows. With her hand still upon the cord of the second shade, she turned and again dumbly surveyed her visitor. Esther flushed visibly at this reception, and had to choke down the first words that came to her lips. Then she went on better: “I hope you'll excuse my rudeness. I really did forget to rap. I came upon very special business. Is Ab—Mr. Beech at home?” “Won't you sit down?” said M'rye, with a glum effort at civility. “I expect him in presently.” The school-ma'am, displaying some diffidence, seated herself in the nearest chair, and gazed at the wall-paper with intentness. She had never seemed to notice me at all—indeed had spoken of seeing M'rye alone through the window—and I now coughed, and stirred to readjust my poultice, but she did not look my way. M'rye had gone back to her chair by the stove, and taken up her mending again. “You'd better lay off your things. You won't feel 'em when you go out,” she remarked, after an embarrassing period of silence, investing the formal phrases with chilling intention. Esther made a fumbling motion at the loop of her big mink cape, but did not unfasten it. “I—I don't know _what_ you think of me,” she began, at last, and then nervously halted. “Mebbe it's just as well you don't,” said M'rye, significantly, darning away with long sweeps of her arm, and bending attentively over her stocking and ball. “I can understand your feeling hard,” Esther went on, still eying the sprawling blue figures on the wall, and plucking with her fingers at the furry tails on her cape. “And—I _am_ to blame, _some_, I can see now—but it didn't seem so, _then_, to either of us.” “It ain't no affair of mine,” remarked M'rye, when the pause came, “but if that's your business with Abner, you won't make much by waitin'. Of course it's nothing to me, one way or t'other.” Not another word was exchanged for a long time. From where I sat I could see the girl's lips tremble, as she looked steadfastly into the wall. I felt certain that M'rye was darning the same place over and over again, so furiously did she keep her needle flying. All at once she looked up angrily. “Well,” she said, in loud, bitter tones: “Why not out with what you've come to say, 'n' be done with it? You've heard something, _I_ know!” Esther shook her head. “No, Mrs. Beech,” she said, with a piteous quaver in her voice, “I—I haven't heard anything!” The sound of her own broken utterances seemed to affect her deeply. Her eyes filled with tears, and she hastily got out a handkerchief from her muff, and began drying them. She could not keep from sobbing aloud a little.