Chapter 11

but I don't care what folks do to their outsides as long as their insides are right. Miss Farrel was a real good woman, and she had a kind of hard time, too."

"Why, I thought she had a real good place in the high-school; and teachers earn their money dreadful easy."

"It wasn't that."

"What was it?"

Lucinda hesitated. "Well," she said, finally, "it can't do her any harm, now she's dead and gone, and I don't know as it was anything against her, anyway. She just set her eyes by your boarder."

"Not Mr. Allen? You don't mean Mr. Allen, Lucinda?"

"What other boarder have you had? I've known about it for a long time. Hannah and me both have known, but we never opened our lips, and I don't want it to go any further now."

"How did you find out?"

"By keeping my eyes and ears open. How does anybody find out anything?"

"I don't believe Mr. Allen ever once thought of her," said Sylvia, and there was resentment in her voice.

"Of course he didn't. Maybe he'll take a shine to that girl you've got with you now."

"Neither one of them has even thought of such a thing," declared Sylvia, and her voice was almost violent.

"Well, I don't know," Lucinda said, indifferently. "I have had too much to look out for of my own affairs since the girl came to know anything about that. I only thought of their being in the same house. I always had sort of an idea myself that maybe Lucy Ayres would be the one."

"I hadn't," said Sylvia. "Not but she--well, she looked real sick to-day. She didn't look fit to stand up there and sing. I should think her mother would be worried about her. And she don't sing half as well as you do."

"Yes, she does," replied Lucinda. "She sings enough sight better than I do."

"Well, I don't know much about music," admitted Sylvia. "I can't tell if anybody gets off the key."

"I can," said Lucinda, firmly. "She sings enough sight better than I can, but I sang plenty well enough for them, and if I hadn't been so mad at the way I've been treated I'd kept on. Now they can get on without me. Lucy Ayres does look miserable. There's consumption in her family, too. Well, it's good for her lungs to sing, if she don't overdo it. Good-bye, Sylvia."

"Good-bye," said Sylvia. She hesitated a moment, then she said: "Don't you mind, Lucinda. Henry and I think just the same of you as we've always thought, and there's a good many besides us. You haven't any call to feel bad."

"I don't feel bad," said Lucinda. "I've got spunk enough and grit enough to bear any load that I 'ain't heaped on my own shoulders, and the Lord knows I 'ain't heaped this. Don't you worry about me, Sylvia. Good-bye."

Lucinda went her way. She held her nice black skirt high, but her plodding feet raised quite a cloud of dust. Her shoulders were thrown back, her head was very erect, the jetted ornament on her bonnet shone like a warrior's crest. She stepped evenly out of sight, as evenly as if she had been a soldier walking in line and saying to himself, "Left, right; left, right."