He had no reason to think that there was any harm in that."
"If he had any sense he might know that he shouldn't tell
anything to father except what happens in the store," Patty
insisted. "Were you frightened out in the barn alone last night,
poor dear?"
"I was too unhappy to think of fear and I was chiefly nervous
about you, all alone in the house with father."
"I didn't like it very much, myself! I buttoned my bedroom door
and sat by the window all night, shivering and bristling at the
least sound. Everybody calls me a coward, but I'm not! Courage
isn't not being frightened; it's not screeching when you are
frightened. Now, what happened at the Boyntons'?"
"Patty, Ivory's mother is the most pathetic creature I ever saw!"
And Waitstill sat up on the sofa, her long braids of hair hanging
over her shoulders, her pale face showing the traces of her heavy
weeping. "I never pitied any one so much in my whole life! To go
up that long, long lane; to come upon that dreary house hidden
away in the trees; to feel the loneliness and the silence; and
then to know that she is living there like a hermit-thrush in a
forest, without a woman to care for her, it is heart-breaking!"
"How does the house look,--dreadful?"
"No: everything is as neat as wax.
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