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"Cousin Lydia wanted to make me cry," exclaimed Dotty, her eyes shooting out sparks of displeasure; "she 'spected I'd cry, and that's why Katie," added she, drawing the little one up to her, "Cousin Lydia won't let you come to her house." "What for she won't?" cried Katie, looking defiant. "If I good would her put me in the closet? I don't like her tall, tenny rate."
There, when I got in there, she had a knife, the carving knife, and she had Amabel's hair all gathered up in one hand, and her head tipped back, and poor old mother Tenny was holding her arms, and screamin', and it was all I could do to get the knife away," and Fanny stripped up her sleeves, and showed a glancing cut on her arm. "She did that before I got it away from her," she said.
"I tell you, sir, it ain't the facts of the case, but the reason for the facts, which we must think of," maintained Nahum Beals. "I don't care a darn for the facts nor the reasons," said Jim Tenny; "all I care about is I'm out of work maybe till spring, with my mother dependent on me, and not a cent laid up, I've been so darned careless, and here's Eva says she won't marry me till I get work."
Zelotes wore an old red cashmere scarf crossed over her bosom; she held up her black skirts in front, and they trailed pointedly in the rear; she also stood well back on her heels, and when she paused in the wind-swept yard presented a curious likeness to an old robin pausing for reconnoitre. Fanny and Eva Tenny in the next house saw her coming.
Oh, it was all my fault, every bit my fault, but, but " Eva's voice broke; suddenly she clasped her sister tighter, and then she went down on her knees beside the bed, and hid her tangled head in her lap. "Oh, Fanny," she sobbed out miserably, "there ain't much excuse for me, but there's a little. When Jim Tenny stopped goin' with me last summer, my heart 'most broke.
She even considered for a moment Jim Tenny of the Rocking-R, whom she had met and liked, or Dr. Blanchard, but a sudden reviving burst of spirit caused her quickly to dismiss the thought. "They'd think I was a silly, hysterical idiot," she murmured. "Why, I couldn't even tell them what I was afraid of. I wonder if it can possibly be just nerves? It doesn't seem as if "
"Those fellows, are so dog-gone lazy they'd sit and let grasshoppers, eat holes in their breeches." As he rode on he wondered a little what Jim Tenny, the Rocking-R foreman, could have to do with Lynch, who seemed to be on the outs with everybody, but Presently he dismissed the subject with a shrug. "I'll be getting as bad as Pop if I'm not careful" he thought.
They were walking three abreast, Amabel in the middle. Jim Tenny looked hesitatingly at them, although his face was widened with irrepressible smiles. Eva gazed at them with defiant radiance. "Well," said she, "so luck has turned?" Amabel laughed out, and her laugh trilled high with a note of silver, above the chatter of the crowd and the blare and rhythmic trill of the orchestra.
Fanny had told this saying of the child's to everybody, and that evening when Jim Tenny came he caught up Ellen and gave her a toss to the ceiling, a trick of his which filled Ellen with a sort of fearful delight, the delight of helplessness in the hands of strength, and the titillation of evanescent risk. "So you are gettin' ready to be married, are you?"
She did not know Katie was her best friend, working and helping get dinner as fast as she could. "Ruthie," sobbed she, "you didn't ask please." "Well, well, child, I'm in a hurry; and when you set things to flying, you're enough to wear out the patience of Job." Job again. "You've said so two times, Ruthie! Now I don't like you tall, tenny rate."
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