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Page 4
"Yes, very," she assented.
"Have you come far?"
"I have come from Michigan."
"Oh!" said the woman, with awe. "It's a long way," she remarked
presently.
"Yes, it is," replied Rebecca, conclusively.
Still the other woman was not daunted; there was something which
she determined to know, possibly roused thereto by a vague sense of
incongruity in the other's appearance. "It's a long ways to come
and leave a family," she remarked with painful slyness.
"I ain't got any family to leave," returned Rebecca shortly.
"Then you ain't--"
"No, I ain't."
"Oh!" said the woman.
Rebecca looked straight ahead at the race of the river.
It was a long ferry. Finally Rebecca herself waxed unexpectedly
loquacious. She turned to the other woman and inquired if she knew
John Dent's widow who lived in Ford Village. "Her husband died
about three years ago," said she, by way of detail.
The woman started violently. She turned pale, then she flushed;
she cast a strange glance at her husband, who was regarding both
women with a sort of stolid keenness.
"Yes, I guess I do," faltered the woman finally.
"Well, his first wife was my sister," said Rebecca with the air of
one imparting important intelligence.
"Was she?" responded the other woman feebly. She glanced at her
husband with an expression of doubt and terror, and he shook his
head forbiddingly.
"I'm going to see her, and take my niece Agnes home with me," said
Rebecca.
Then the woman gave such a violent start that she noticed it.
"What is the matter?" she asked.
"Nothin', I guess," replied the woman, with eyes on her husband,
who was slowly shaking his head, like a Chinese toy.
"Is my niece sick?" asked Rebecca with quick suspicion.
"No, she ain't sick," replied the woman with alacrity, then she
caught her breath with a gasp.
"When did you see her?"
"Let me see; I ain't seen her for some little time," replied the
woman. Then she caught her breath again.
"She ought to have grown up real pretty, if she takes after my
sister. She was a real pretty woman," Rebecca said wistfully.
"Yes, I guess she did grow up pretty," replied the woman in a
trembling voice.
"What kind of a woman is the second wife?"
The woman glanced at her husband's warning face. She continued to
gaze at him while she replied in a choking voice to Rebecca:
"I--guess she's a nice woman," she replied. "I--don't know, I--
guess so. I--don't see much of her."
"I felt kind of hurt that John married again so quick," said
Rebecca; "but I suppose he wanted his house kept, and Agnes wanted
care. I wasn't so situated that I could take her when her mother
died. I had my own mother to care for, and I was school-teaching.
Now mother has gone, and my uncle died six months ago and left me
quite a little property, and I've given up my school, and I've come
for Agnes. I guess she'll be glad to go with me, though I suppose
her stepmother is a good woman, and has always done for her."
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