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"I do, indeed!" cried Waitstill to herself as she turned the words over and over trying to feed her hungry heart with them. "I love to hear Ivory talk; it's like the stories in the books. We have our best times in the barn, for I'm helping with the milking, now. Our yellow cow's name is Molly and the red cow used to be Dolly, but we changed her to Golly, 'cause she's so troublesome.
Waitstill stirred the fire, closed the brick oven and put the teapot on the back of the stove, hung up the long-handled dipper on its accustomed nail over the sink, and went to the door. Her father collected his scattered wits and pulled himself to his feet by the arms of the high-backed rocker.
"No, not worse, Patty," said Waitstill, taking the bread-board and moving towards the closet. "Ivory loves his mother and she loves him, with all the mind she has left! She has the best blood of New England flowing in her veins, and I suppose it was a great come down for her to marry Aaron Boynton, clever and gifted though he was.
Waity, after all, though we never have what we want to eat, and never a decent dress to our backs, nor a young man to cross the threshold, I wouldn't change places with Ivory Boynton, would you?" Here Patty swept the hearth vigorously with a turkey wing and added a few corncobs to the fire. Waitstill paused a moment in her task of bread-kneading.
I sez to Philury, "We must have dinner early, for we are invited to Ernest and Waitstill White's." And I sez the same to Josiah. And he sez, "You've said that to me a dozen times already." "Well," sez I cheerfully, "mebby I shall say it a dozen times more." I felt well, dretful well in my mind. It had come out just as I had hoped and prayed for, and why shouldn't I feel good.
I believe if Waitstill needed help I could hear her breathe! Besides, I shall be up and down the hill till I know all's well; and at sunrise I'll go up and hide behind some of Baxter's buildings till I see him get his breakfast and go to the store. Now wash your dishes"; and Ivory caught up his cap from a hook behind the door. "Are you going to the barn?" asked Rodman.
Robert Strong, for Dorothy's sake as well as his own, left detectives to help on the search for the lost ones, and left word how to communicate with him at any time. Waitstill Webb, bein' consulted with, promised to do all in her power to help find them, but she didn't act half so shocked and horrified as I spozed she would, not half so much as Arvilly did.
Waitstill disdained any vague, dreary, colorless theory of life and its meaning. She had joined the church at fifteen, more or less because other girls did and the parson had persuaded her; but out of her hard life she had somehow framed a courageous philosophy that kept her erect and uncrushed, no matter how great her difficulties.
Waitstill certainly would never have examined Patty closely as to the state of her affections, intimate as she was with her sister's thoughts and opinions about life; she simply bided her time until Patty should confide in her.
"Who is the husband?" asked Waitstill dryly, as she wiped her eyes and leaned her elbow on the table. "Who could it be but Mark? Has there ever been any one but Mark?" "I should have said that there were several, in these past few months." Waitstill's tone showed clearly that she was still grieved and hurt beyond her power to conceal.
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