"Oh, mother!" she
cried.

"Keep still!" ordered her mother. "I dun'no' what you mean," she said
to Squire Merritt.

The Squire's smile deepened, but he looked frightened; his eyes fell
before hers. "Why, what I say--I don't want this money, this time. I
have all I need. Keep it over till the next half."

Squire Eben Merritt had a feeling as if something actually tangible,
winged and clawed and beaked, and flaming with eyes, pounced upon
him. He fairly shrank back, so fierce was Ann's burst of indignation;
it produced a sense of actual contact.

"Keep it till next half?" repeated Ann. "Keep it till next half? What
should we keep it till next half for, I'd like to know? It's your
money, ain't it? We don't want it; we ain't beggars; we don't need
it. I see through you, Squire Eben Merritt; you think I don't, but I
do."

"I fear I don't know what you mean," the Squire said, helplessly.

"I see through you," repeated Ann. She had reverted to her first
suspicion that his design was to gain possession of the whole
property by letting the unpaid interest accumulate, but that poor
Squire Eben did not know. He gave up all attempts to understand this
woman's mysterious innuendoes, and took the true masculine method of
departure from an uncomfortable subject at right angles, with no
further ado.

He opened his game-bag and held up a brace of fat partridges. "Well,"
he said, laughing, "I want you to see what luck I've had shooting,
Mrs. Edwards. I've bagged eight of these fellows to-day."

But Ann could not make a mental revolution so easily. She gave a
half-indifferent, half-scornful squint at the partridges. "I dun'no'
much about shootin'," said she, shortly. Ann had always been, in her
own family, a passionate woman, but among outsiders she had borne
herself with dignified politeness and formal gentility, clothing, as
it were, her intensity of spirit with a company garb. Now, since her
terrible trouble had come upon her, this garb had often slipped
aside, and revealed, with the indecency of affliction, the struggling
naked spirit of the woman to those from whom she had so carefully
hidden it.

Once Ann would not have believed that she would have so borne herself
towards Squire Merritt. The Squire laid the partridges on the table.
"I am going to leave these for your supper, Mrs. Edwards," he said,
easily; but he quaked a little, for this woman seemed to repel gifts
like blows.

"Thank ye," said Ann, dryly, "but I g