And how she hated Priscilla Pantin!
Always Mrs. Toomey had had a quaint conceit that if she listened attentively she would be able to hear Priscilla's heart jingling in her body--rattling like a bit of ice in a tin bucket. Now the woman's mean, chaste little soul laid bare before her filled Delia Toomey with a dumb fury.
Mrs. Pantin waited patiently for her answer, though the experience was a new one. Usually she had only to reach for the whip when her satellites mutinied; almost never was it necessary to crack it.
While Mrs. Toomey hesitated Mrs. Pantin folded her work--this, too, was significant.
Mrs. Toomey replied, finally, in desperation: "I'll think over what you've said, Priscilla. I appreciate your intentions, thoroughly, believe me."
There was a cowed note in her voice which Mrs. Pantin detected. She smiled faintly.
"I don't know when I've spent such a delightful afternoon," and kissed her.
Mrs. Toomey curbed an impulse to bite her friend as she returned the parting salute.
"And I've so enjoyed having you," she murmured.
* * * * * Mrs. Toomey turned pale when she looked through the front window and saw Kate, a few days after Mrs. Pantin's visit, dismount and tie her horse to the cottonwood sapling, for the threat, which held for her all the import of a Ku-Klux warning, had been hanging over her like the sword of Damocles.
It had haunted her by day, and at night she could not sleep for thinking of it, and yet she was no nearer reaching a decision than when the struggle between her conscience and her cowardice had started.
Quite instinctively she glanced again to see if the neighbors were looking. There were interested faces at several windows. Mrs. Toomey had a sudden feeling of irritation, not with the sentinels doing picket duty but with Kate for tying her horse in front so conspicuously. Mrs. Toomey shrank from the staring eyes as though she had found herself walking down the middle of the road in her underclothing.
The feeling vanished when Kate came up the walk slowly and she saw how white and haggard the girl's face was.
Mrs. Toomey opened the door and asked her in nervously.
Kate looked at her wistfully as though she yearned for some display of affection beyond the conventional greeting, but since Mrs. Toomey did not offer to kiss her she sank into a chair with a suggestion of weariness.
"I hope you're not busy--that I'm not bothering?"
"Oh, no--not at all."
"I couldn't help coming, somehow--I just couldn't go back without seeing you. I wanted to see a friendly face--to hear a friendly voice." She clasped her fingers tightly together: "Oh, you don't know how much you mean to me! I feel so alone--adrift--and I long so for some one to lean on, just for a little, until I get my bearings. It seems as though every atom of courage and confidence had oozed out of me. I don't believe that ever again in all my life I'll long for sympathy as I do this minute." She spoke slowly with breaths between, as though the heaviness of her heart made talking an effort.