XXII

“Have you heard the news?” cried Carrie Dungen, as she sped toward Martha’s kitchen. “Have you heard the news?” Her eyes were shining with delight.

“No,” answered Martha’s sister Kate, bending forward eagerly. “What was it? What was it?”

Carrie appeared triumphantly in the open door. “Oh, there’s been an awful scene between Doctor Trescott and Jake Winter. I never thought that Jake Winter had any pluck at all, but this morning he told the doctor just what he thought of him.”

“Well, what did he think of him?” asked Martha.

“Oh, he called him everything. Mrs. Howarth heard it through her front blinds. It was terrible, she says. It’s all over town now. Everybody knows it.”

“Didn’t the doctor answer back?”

“No! Mrs. Howarth—she says he never said a word. He just walked down to his buggy and got in, and drove off as co-o-o-l. But Jake gave him jinks, by all accounts.”

“But what did he say?” cried Kate, shrill and excited. She was evidently at some kind of a feast.

“Oh, he told him that Sadie had never been well since that night Henry Johnson frightened her at Theresa Page’s party, and he held him responsible, and how dared he cross his threshold—and—and—and—”

“And what?” said Martha.

“Did he swear at him?” said Kate, in fearsome glee.

“No—not much. He did swear at him a little, but not more than a man does anyhow when he is real mad, Mrs. Howarth says.”

“O-oh!” breathed Kate. “And did he call him any names?”

Martha, at her work, had been for a time in deep thought. She now interrupted the others. “It don’t seem as if Sadie Winter had been sick since that time Henry Johnson got loose. She’s been to school almost the whole time since then, hasn’t she?”

They combined upon her in immediate indignation. “School? School? I should say not. Don’t think for a moment. School!”

Martha wheeled from the sink. She held an iron spoon, and it seemed as if she was going to attack them. “Sadie Winter has passed here many a morning since then carrying her school-bag. Where was she going? To a wedding?”

The others, long accustomed to a mental tyranny, speedily surrendered.

“Did she?” stammered Kate. “I never saw her.”

Carrie Dungen made a weak gesture.

“If I had been Doctor Trescott,” exclaimed Martha, loudly, “I’d have knocked that miserable Jake Winter’s head off.”

Kate and Carrie, exchanging glances, made an alliance in the air. “I don’t see why you say that, Martha,” replied Carrie, with considerable boldness, gaining support and sympathy from Kate’s smile. “I don’t see