Annie Kilburn

She started up. "There is nothing--nothing that medicine can help. Why do

you call him my favourite?" she demanded violently. "But you have wasted

your time. If he had made up his mind to what you say, he would never give

it up--never in the world!" she added hysterically. "If you've interfered

between any one and his duty in this world, where it seems as if hardly

any one had any duty, you've done a very unwarrantable thing." She was

aware from his stare that her words were incoherent, if not from the words

themselves, but she hurried on: "I am going with him. He was here last

night, and I told him I would. I will go with the Savors, and we will keep

the child together; and if they will take me, I shall go to work in the

mills; and I shall not care what people think, if it's right--"

She stopped and weakly dropped back on the lounge, and hid her face in the

pillow.

"I really don't understand." The doctor began, with a physician's

carefulness, to unwind the coil she had flung down to him. "Are the Savors

going, and the child?"

"He will give her the child for the one they lost--you know how! And they

will take it with them."

"But you--what have you--"

"I must have the child too! I can't give it up, and I shall go with them.

There's no other way. You don't know. I've given him my word, and there is

no hope!"

"He asked you," said the doctor, to make sure he had heard aright--"he

asked you--advised you--to go to work in a cotton-mill?"

"No;" she lifted her face to confront him. "He told me _not_ to go;

but I said I would."

They sat staring at each other in a silence which neither of them broke,

and which promised to last indefinitely. They were still in their daze when

Putney's voice came through the open hall door.

"Hello! hello! hello! Hello, Central! _Can't_ I make you hear, any

one?" His steps advanced into the hall, and he put his head in at the

library doorway. "Thought you'd be here," he said, nodding at the doctor.

"Well, doctor, Brother Peck's beaten us again. He's going."

"Going?" the doctor echoed.

"Yes. It's no use. I put the whole case before him, and I argued it with a

force of logic that would have fetched the twelfth man with eleven stubborn

fellows against him on a jury; but it didn't fetch Brother Peck. He was

very appreciative and grateful, but he believes he's got a call to give up

the ministry, for the present at least. Well, there's some consolation in

supposing he may know best, after all. It seemed to us that he had a great

opportunity in Hatboro', but if he turns his back on it, perhaps it's a

sign he wasn't equal to it. The doctor told you what we've been up to,

Annie?"