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The Deacon was baffled, almost awed, by Waitstill's quiet self-control; but at the very moment that he was half-uncomprehendingly glaring at her, it dawned upon him that he was beaten, and that she was mistress of the situation. Where would she go? What were her plans? for definite plans she had, or she could not meet his eye with so resolute a gaze.
Baxter turned her pale, tired face away from Waitstill's appealing eyes. "I know," she said faintly. "I hate to leave you to bear the brunt alone, but I must!... Take good care of Patience and don't let her get into trouble.... You won't, will you?" "I'll be careful," promised Waitstill, sobbing quietly; "I'll do my best."
He could not go long distances, like the other men, as he felt constrained to come home every day or two to look after his mother and Rodman, but the work was too lucrative to be altogether refused. With Waitstill's help, he had at last overcome his mother's aversion to old Mrs.
I shall have much to tell you when we meet to-morrow." 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.
When Waitstill's boys and Patty's girls come back to the farm, they play by Saco Water as their mothers and their fathers did before them.
Waitstill's voice trembled a trifle, but other-wise she was quite calm and free from heroics of any sort. The Deacon looked up in surprise. "I guess you're kind o' hystericky," he said. "Set down set down an' talk things over. I ain't got nothin' ag'in' you, an' I mean to treat you right. Set down!"
The meadows were a waving mass of golden buttercups; the shallow water at the river's edge just below the shop was blue with spikes of arrow-weed; a bunch of fragrant water-lilies, gathered from the mill-pond's upper levels, lay beside Waitstill's mending-basket, and every foot of roadside and field within sight was swaying with long-stemmed white and gold daisies.
"She's innocent as a kitten," observed Mrs. Day impartially. "Oh, yes, she's innocent enough an' I hope she'll keep so! Waitstill's a sight han'somer, if the truth was told; but she's the sort of girl that's made for one man and the rest of em never look at her. The other one's cut out for the crowd, the more the merrier. She's a kind of man-trap, that girl is!
Waitstill's longing, her discouragement, her helplessness, overcame her wholly, and she flung herself down under a tree in the pasture in a very passion of sobbing, a luxury in which she could seldom afford to indulge herself.
There was only one man who had the worldly wisdom or the means to carry Patty off under the very eye of her watchful sister; only one with the reckless courage to defy her father; and that was Mark Wilson. His name did not bring absolute confidence to Waitstill's mind.
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