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I am going home to tell them." "You mean to tell them!" "Not a doubt of it. But why look as if you had seen a ghost?" "And what do you suppose will happen?" "Mother and Molly will cry, and Emmy will make an oration which I shall interrupt, and Kezzy will open her eyes at such a monster, and father will want to horsewhip me, but restrain himself and turn me from the door.
Emilia tucked a foot out of sight under her skirt. "But I don't understand this game," put in Kezzy. "A moment ago it was Blue Beard, and now it seems to be Beauty and the Beast. Which is it?" "We may need Molly's mirror to tell us," Hetty answered lightly: and with that she glanced up as a shadow darkened the golden sky above the mound, and a voice addressed the sisters all.
When Molly returned, leading in her sister, Mrs. Wesley was seated by the fire alone. Mother and daughter looked into each other's eyes. In silence Hetty stepped forward and dropped into the chair a minute ago vacated by Kezzy. But for the ticking of the tall clock there was no sound in the kitchen. Mrs. Wesley read Hetty's eyes; read the truth in them, and something else which tied her tongue.
I used to tell her how it would be; for Kezzy and I were pretty good friends once, before the Indian in her came out so strongly, the squaw and the witch, for she had them both in her blood, poor yellow Kezzy!" "Yes! had she indeed?" quoth the doctor; "and I have heard an odd story, that if the Feltons chose to go back to the old country, they'd find a home and an estate there ready for them."
Alongside, in well-brushed Sunday clothes, with clean faces and smooth hair, sat the whole of us younger people, each drawn up in a chair, with hat and handkerchief, ready for the first stroke of the bell, while Aunt Kezzy, all trimmed, and primmed, and made ready for meeting, sat reading her psalm book, only looking up occasionally to give an additional jerk to some shirt collar, or the fifteenth pull to Susan's frock, or to repress any straggling looks that might be wandering about, "beholding vanity."
"He has gone to meet mother, then," said Kezzy, "and poor Sander will have to trudge the last two miles." "Pray Heaven, then, they do not quarrel!" sighed Emilia, shutting the book. "My dear!" Hetty assured her, "that is past praying for. She will be weary to death; and he, as you know, is in a mood to-day!
Hetty alone treated her always gently and made much of her, not as one who would soften a defect, but as seeing none; Hetty of the high spirits, the clear eye, the springing gait; Hetty, the wittiest, cleverest, mirthfullest of them all; Hetty, glorious to look upon. All the six were handsome. By baptism, Molly was Mary; Hetty, Mehetabel; Nancy, Anne; Patty, Martha; and Kezzy, Kezia.
Hard times it will be for poor Aunt Kezzy, if she's to lose her taste for the medicine that, under Providence, has saved her life for so many years." She gave back the cup to Septimius, after looking a little curiously at the dregs. "It looks like bloodroot, don't it?" said she. "Perhaps it's my own fault after all.
And drawing a folded paper from her waistband, she drawled the following, in the broadest Lincolnshire accent: Nancy and Kezzy laughed; the younger at the absurd drawl, which hit off the Wroote dialect to a hair; Nancy indulgently she was safely betrothed to one John Lambert, an honest land-surveyor, and Mr. Wesley's tyranny towards suitors troubled her no longer.
With the dropping of the sun a chilly shadow had fallen on the mound, and for some moments the sisters remained motionless, agonised, each in her own way distraught. "The brute!" said Kezzy at length, drawing a long breath. Hetty rose deliberately. "Child," she said, and her voice was hard, "don't be a goose! The poor creature came for his money. He had the right to insult us."
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