第71章 XXIX(1)

WAITSTILL SPEAKS HER MIND

Patty had the most ardent love for her elder sister, and something that resembled reverence for her unselfishness, her loyalty, and her strength of character; but if the truth were told she had no great opinion of Waitstill's ability to feel righteous wrath, nor of her power to avenge herself in the face of rank injustice. It was the conviction of her own superior finesse and audacity that had sustained patty all through her late escapade. She felt herself a lucky girl, indeed, to achieve liberty and happiness for herself, but doubly lucky if she had chanced to open a way of escape for her more docile and dutiful sister.

She would have been a trifle astonished had she surmised the existence of certain mysterious waves that had been sweeping along the coasts of Waitstill's mind that afternoon, breaking down all sorts of defences and carrying her will along with them by sheer force: but it is a truism that two human beings can live beside each other for half a century and yet continue strangers.

Patty's elopement with the youth of her choice, taking into account all its attendant risks, was Indeed an exhibition of courage and initiative not common to girls of seventeen; but Waitstill was meditating a mutiny more daring yet--a mutiny, too, involving a course of conduct most unusual in maidens of puritan descent.

She walked back into the kitchen to find her father sitting placidly in the rocking-chair by the window. He had lighted his corn-cob pipe, in which he always smoked a mixture of dried sweet-fern as being cheaper than tobacco, and his face wore something resembling a smile--a foxy smile--as he watched his youngest-born ploughing down the hill through the deep snow, while the more obedient Waitstill moved about the room, setting supper on the table.

Conversation was not the Deacon's forte, but it seemed proper for some one to break the ice that seemed suddenly to be very thick in the immediate vicinity.

"That little Jill-go-over-the-ground will give the neighbors a pleasant evenin' tellin' 'em 'bout me," he chuckled. "Aunt Abby Cole will run the streets o' the three villages by sun-up to-morrer; but nobody pays any 'tention to a woman whose tongue is hung in the middle and wags at both ends. I wa'n't intending to use the whip on your sister, Waitstill," continued the Deacon, with a crafty look at his silent daughter, "though a trouncin' w ould 'a' done her a sight o' good; but I was only tryin' to frighten her a little mite an' pay her up for bringin' disgrace on us the way she's done, makin' us the talk o' the town. Well, she's gone, an' good riddance to bad rubbish, say I! One less mouth to feed, an' one less body to clothe. You'll miss her jest at first, on account o' there bein' no other women-folks on the hill, but 't won't last long. I'll have Bill Morrill do some o' your outside chores, so 't you can take on your sister's work, if she ever done any."