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Page 17
"Hush!" said Caroline, with a glance of actual fear at the closed
door.
"Nobody can hear with the door shut."
"He must have heard it shut, and--"
"Well, I can say what I want to before he comes down, and I am not
afraid of him."
"I don't know who is afraid of him! What reason is there for
anybody to be afraid of Henry?" demanded Caroline.
Mrs. Brigham trembled before her sister's look. Rebecca gasped
again. "There isn't any reason, of course. Why should there be?"
"I wouldn't speak so, then. Somebody might overhear you and think
it was queer. Miranda Joy is in the south parlour sewing, you
know."
"I thought she went upstairs to stitch on the machine."
"She did, but she has come down again."
"Well, she can't hear."
"I say again I think Henry ought to be ashamed of himself. I
shouldn't think he'd ever get over it, having words with poor
Edward the very night before he died. Edward was enough sight
better disposition than Henry, with all his faults. I always
thought a great deal of poor Edward, myself."
Mrs. Brigham passed a large fluff of handkerchief across her eyes;
Rebecca sobbed outright.
"Rebecca," said Caroline admonishingly, keeping her mouth stiff and
swallowing determinately.
"I never heard him speak a cross word, unless he spoke cross to
Henry that last night. I don't know, but he did from what Rebecca
overheard," said Emma.
"Not so much cross as sort of soft, and sweet, and aggravating,"
sniffled Rebecca.
"He never raised his voice," said Caroline; "but he had his way."
"He had a right to in this case."
"Yes, he did."
"He had as much of a right here as Henry," sobbed Rebecca, "and now
he's gone, and he will never be in this home that poor father left
him and the rest of us again."
"What do you really think ailed Edward?" asked Emma in hardly more
than a whisper. She did not look at her sister.
Caroline sat down in a nearby armchair, and clutched the arms
convulsively until her thin knuckles whitened.
"I told you," said she.
Rebecca held her handkerchief over her mouth, and looked at them
above it with terrified, streaming eyes.
"I know you said that he had terrible pains in his stomach, and had
spasms, but what do you think made him have them?"
"Henry called it gastric trouble. You know Edward has always had
dyspepsia."
Mrs. Brigham hesitated a moment. "Was there any talk of an--
examination?" said she.
Then Caroline turned on her fiercely.
"No," said she in a terrible voice. "No."
The three sisters' souls seemed to meet on one common ground of
terrified understanding though their eyes. The old-fashioned latch
of the door was heard to rattle, and a push from without made the
door shake ineffectually. "It's Henry," Rebecca sighed rather than
whispered. Mrs. Brigham settled herself after a noiseless rush
across the floor into her rocking-chair again, and was swaying back
and forth with her head comfortably leaning back, when the door at
last yielded and Henry Glynn entered. He cast a covertly sharp,
comprehensive glance at Mrs. Brigham with her elaborate calm; at
Rebecca quietly huddled in the corner of the sofa with her
handkerchief to her face and only one small reddened ear as
attentive as a dog's uncovered and revealing her alertness for his
presence; at Caroline sitting with a strained composure in her
armchair by the stove. She met his eyes quite firmly with a look
of inscrutable fear, and defiance of the fear and of him.
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