Women of the Country | Page 9

expostulated Dick, "I don't know as it's anybody's
business. Everybody's got their own affairs to attend to."
"Oh yes! I know," said Anne. "It's never anybody's business to try to
prevent such things, but it'll be everybody's business to throw stones at
the girl very soon, if the man tires of her."
"I don't know about preventing," returned Dick; "she seemed pretty set
on him herself. I think myself it's a pity. Here's the eggs from Mary
Colton, Miss Hilton--three dozen," he added, as a diversion from the
conversation, which he found more embarrassing than the sermon he
had successfully avoided. With that he escaped from the chair with a
jerk, scuffled his feet once or twice on the floor, took his cap out of his
pocket, and ejaculated "Good-night."
"Good-night," replied Anne, still preoccupied. "Thank you for bringing

the eggs;" and she sat down with a slight groan.
"Why, it might be herself," reflected Dick, looking back at the dejected
figure in the darkening room. Being a simple youth, he felt vaguely
uncomfortable at the sight of such trouble over the doings of one who
was no relation, and began to take a little blame to himself for thinking
lightly of the girl's downfall.
"Well, she's very good," he concluded in his thoughts, "but she's
peculiar;" and he tramped heavily through the yard into the lane.
Anne did not stir. She was so shocked that her bodily faculties seemed
to have ceased, and her mind to have remained sorrowing and awake.
This lapse was even worse than that of Sir Richard's son, because it
seemed irretrievable. Then, too, it had happened before she knew
anything about it, whereas, in the other case, she had been active, and
able to expostulate and screen the young man's fall. And then, too,
there was the surprise of a middle-aged woman at the lapses of "young,
strong people," just as, if one of more maturity had fallen, the comment
of the young would have been equally certain, "an old thing like her."
To Anne, whose temptations were of the kind that betray rather than
assault, all faults of the flesh seemed of equal gravity--a man's gluttony
or drunkenness, or a woman's misdemeanour. The one did not shock
her more than the other. She thought of her old friend, the grandmother
who had brought up the girls, denying herself sleep and ease that they
might not run wild as many girls do, but might grow up girls of good
character. Since the grandmother died, Jane, who was young and pretty,
had tried to support herself. Anne did not know Richard Burton, but he
was older and a "married man," which, of itself, implied responsibility
to her mind. With the passion for justice, in which her intellectual
faculties found material for exercise, she declared that Burton must be
more to blame than Jane. He had money and position in the
country-side. But equally as he was more to blame he would be less
blamed. No one would dare to tell him he was wrong. They would wait,
stone in hand, for the girl who had been a child among them, and when
she was forsaken and alone would throw and strike. Anne lived apart,
but she knew that. "It will be visited on the girl," she thought; and

indignation at Richard Burton rose steadily in her thoughts.
After a while she stirred, and, lighting a candle, slowly stooped and
raised the lid of the bread-mug. Pulling out half a loaf, she cut a thick
piece for supper. She ate it slowly, with a piece of cold bacon, then,
taking the candle, her shadow growing gigantic behind her, she
fastened the door without looking outside, and climbed the stairs,
heavily and sorrowfully, to her solitary bedroom, her shadow with one
jerk filling the whole room.
CHAPTER VII
There was no covered market even in so considerable a town as
Haybarn. From end to end of the rectangular market-place were set
wooden tables on movable trestles, and over these were stretched
frames of canvas, the whole assembly looking like a fantastic toy
village set in the middle of the substantial brick houses, banks, and inns
of the square, or like a child's erections amid the solid furniture on a
nursery floor.
On each side of the square, with their backs to the stalls and facing the
shops whose goods and attractions overflowed to the pavement as if
offering themselves at the feet of the passers-by, stood a row of
countrywomen and girls with market baskets of butter and eggs,
plucked fowls, red currants, plums, curds, tight nosegays of pinks,
stocks, wall-flowers, or anything else saleable or in season which a
cottage garden produces. In and about among these, pushed women of
all degrees and ages, tasting butter, holding eggs