Lord! when the dance strikes up, to see you
carryin' off the other maids' danglers an' treating your own man like
dirt!"
Ruby stood up, the water still running off her frock upon the slates,
her moist eyes resting beyond the window on the midden-heap across the
yard, as if she saw there the picture Mary Jane conjured up.
"No. I won't join their low frolic; an' you ought to be above it.
I'll pull my curtains an' sit up-stairs all day, an' you shall read to
me."
The other pulled a wry face. This was not her idea of enjoyment.
She went back to the goose sad at heart, for Miss Ruby had a knack of
enforcing her wishes.
Sure enough, soon after dinner was cleared away (a meal through which
Ruby had sulked and Farmer Tresidder eaten heartily, talking with a full
mouth about the rescue, and coarsely ignoring what he called his
daughter's "faddles"), the two girls retired to the chamber up-stairs;
where the mistress was as good as her word, and pulled the dimity
curtains before settling herself down in an easy-chair to listen to
extracts from a polite novel as rendered aloud, under dire compulsion,
by Mary Jane.
The rain had ceased by this, and the wind abated, though it still howled
around the angle of the house and whipped a spray of the monthly-rose
bush on the quarrels of the window, filling the pauses during which
Mary Jane wrestled with a hard word.
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