“Yes, she did,” replied the old woman. “She _did_. And I just want to know, Mandy, what you all have been saying to her? I want to know, I say?” “We haven’t been saying anything to her as I know of,” said the farmer’s wife in slow, studious surprise. “I know you have, I say, I know you _have_!” The withered hand holding the fan quivered in excitement. “I know you have, for I can always tell when that poor child is worried. I heard a little of it, too, but not all. I heard them mention Hillhouse’s name. I tell you, I am not going to sit still and let a whole pack of addle-pated women tease as good a girl as Cynthia is plumb to death.” “I don’t think they were troubling her,” Mrs. Porter said, her face drawn in thought, her mind elsewhere. “I know they _were_,” the old woman insisted. “She may have hidden it in there before you all, but when she came in here just now she stopped right near me and looked me full in the face, and never since she was a little baby have I seen such an odd look in her eyes. They looked like they were about to burst with tears. She saw me looking at her, and she come up behind me and laid her face down against my neck. She quivered all over, and then she said, ‘Oh, Granny! Oh, Granny!’ and then she straightened up and went right out at that door into the yard. I tell you, it’s got to let up. She sha’n’t have the life deviled out of her. If she don’t want to marry that preacher, she don’t have to. As for me, I’d rather have married any sort of man on earth when I was young than a long-legged, straight-faced preacher.” “You say she went out in the yard?” said Mrs. Porter absently. “I wonder what she went out there for.” Mrs. Porter went to the door and looked out. There was a clothesline stretched between two apple trees nearby, and Cynthia stood at it taking down a tablecloth. She turned with it in her arms and came to her mother. “I just remembered,” she said, “that there isn’t a clean cloth for the table. Mother, the iron is hot on the stove. You go back to the girls and I’ll smooth this out and set the table.” The eyes of the two met. Mrs. Porter took a deep breath. “All right,” she said. “I’ll go back to the company, but I’ve got something to say, and then I’m done for good. I want to say that I’m glad a daughter of mine has got the proper pride and spunk you have. I see you are not going to make a goose of yourself before visitors, and I’m proud of you. You are the right sort—especially after he’s acted in the scandalous way he has and—and laid you, even as good a girl as you, liable to be talked about for keeping company with him.” The girl’s eyes sank. Something seemed to rise and struggle up within her, for her breast heaved and her shoulders quivered convulsively. “I’ll fix the cloth,” she said in a low, forced voice, “and then I’ll set the table and call you.” “All right”; Mrs. Porter was turning away. “I’ll try to keep them entertained till you come back.”