Ellison. Her
eyes were brighter than usual, but she composed herself into a careful
disregard of annoyance. When desire of news assailed her, she could
easily conceal her personal resentments, cannily sacrificing small
issues to great. "I guess there's no danger o' Parson Bond's gittin'
into the paper, so long 's he behaves himself; but if anybody's got
eyes, they can't help seein'. I hadn't been in the Bible class five
minutes afore I guessed how he was carryin' on. Has he begun to go with
Isabel North, an' his wife not cold in her grave?"
"Well, I think, for my part, he does want Isabel," said Mrs. Robbins
sharply, "an' I say it's a sin an' a shame. Why, she ain't twenty, an'
he's sixty if he's a day. My soul! Sally Ware, you better be settin'
your cap for my William Henry. He's 'most nineteen."
Miss Ware flushed, and her plump hands tightened upon each other under
her shawl. She was never entirely at ease in the atmosphere of these
assured married women; it was always a little bracing.
"Well, how's she take it?" asked Tilly, turning from one to the other.
"Tickled to death, I s'pose?"
"Well, I guess she ain't!" broke in a younger woman, whose wedding
finery was not yet outworn. "She's most sick over it, and so she has
been ever since her sister married and went away.
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