Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

“ Strikes me you are just spoiling the whole lot, father thrown in, Annie. You are a dear, just as they say, but you are too much of a dear to be good for them.”
Annie stared.
“You are letting that omelet burn,” said Benny. “Say, Annie, I will go out and turn that hay in the morning. I know I don't amount to much, but I ain't a girl, anyhow, and I haven't got a cross-eyed soul. That's what ails a lot of girls. They mean all right, but their souls have been cross-eyed ever since they came into the world, and it's just such girls as you who ought to get them straightened out. ”

“ Imogen really thinks she swept it.”
“Imogen always thinks she has done everything she ought to do, whether she has done it or not,” said Benny with unusual astuteness. “Why don't you up and tell her she lies, Annie?”
“She doesn't really lie,” said Annie.
“She does lie, even if she doesn't know it,” said Benny, “and what is more, she ought to be made to know it. Say, Annie, it strikes me that you are doing the same by the girls that they accuse you of doing by me. Aren't you encouraging them in evil ways?” ”

“ There was something hard but compelling about her blond beauty.
“I am afraid,” said Jane, “that people have a sort of general impression that dear Annie has perhaps as sweet a disposition as any of us, perhaps sweeter.”
“Nobody says that dear Annie has not a sweet disposition,” said Imogen, taking a careful stitch in her embroidery. “But a sweet disposition is very often extremely difficult for other people. It constantly puts them in the wrong. I am well aware of the fact that dear Annie does a great deal for all of us, but it is sometimes irritating. ”

“ The sisters did not violently incriminate her. They were too astute for that. They told half-truths. They told truths which were as shadows of the real facts, and yet not to be contradicted. They built up between them a story marvellously consistent unless prearranged and that Annie did not think possible. George Wells figured in the tale and there were various hints and pauses concerning herself and her own character in daily life, and not one item could be flatly denied, even if the girl could have gone down there and, standing in the midst of that moonlight group, given her sisters the lie. ”

“ Annie made one motion toward the barn, but there was no use. The hay was not half cocked. There was no sense in running for covers. Benny was up and lumbering into the house, and her sisters were shutting windows and crying out to her. Annie deserted her post and fled before the wind, her pink skirts lashing her heels, her hair dripping.
When she entered the sitting-room her sisters, Imogen, Eliza, Jane, and Susan were all there; also her father, Silas, tall and gaunt and gray. To the Hempsteads a thunder-storm partook of the the nature of a religious ceremony. ”

“ Annie turned and started and stared at him.
Benny nodded. “I can't see any difference,” he said. “There isn't a day but one of the girls thinks she has done something you have done, or hasn't done something you ought to have done, and they blame you all the time, when you don't deserve it, and you let them, and they don't know it, and I don't think myself that they know they tell whoppers; but they ought to know. ”

“ She had been imperturbable even with Benny, who had whispered to her: “Say, Annie, I don't blame you, but it will be a hell of a time without you. Can't you stick it out?”
But she had had a struggle before her own vision of the butcher and the grocer, and their amazement when she ceased to speak to them. Then she settled that with a sudden leap of inspiration. It sounded too apropos to be life, but there was a little deaf and dumb girl, a faraway relative of the Hempsteads, who lived with her aunt Felicia in Anderson. ”

“ A sweet nature is always rather dreadful when it turns and strikes, and Annie struck with the whole force of a nature with a foundation of steel. She left nothing unsaid. She defended herself and she accused her sisters as if before a judge. ”

“ I don't tell tales, but you ought to know this, for I believe Tom Reed has his eye on you, in spite of Imogen's being such a beauty, and Susan's having manners like silk, and Eliza's giving everybody the impression that she is too good for this earth, and Jane's trying to make everybody think she is a sweet martyr, without a thought for mortal man, when that is only her way of trying to catch one. ”

“ The spring shrubs had all spelled out their floral but recitations, of course, but great clumps of peonies were spreading wide skirts of gigantic bloom, like dancers curtsying low on the stage of summer, and shafts of green-white Yucca lilies and Japan lilies and clove-pinks still remained in their school of bloom. ”

“ You are all a jealous lot. If you girls can't have a beau yourselves, you begrudge one to me. I never saw such a house as this for a man to come courting in.”
“I will stay,” said Eliza, and this time her voice was wholly firm. “There is no use in my going, anyway, for the others are coming back.”
It was true. Back flitted Jane and Susan, and by that time Tom Reed had reached the gate, and his cigar was going out in a shower of sparks on the gravel walk, and all four sisters were greeting him, and urging upon his acceptance the fifth chair. ”

“ She had folded the omelet, and was carefully watching it.
“You need not worry about that, Benny dear,” she said.
“Then what right have the girls to tell so many people the nice things they hear you say about him?”
Annie removed the omelet skilfully from the pan to a hot plate, which she set on the range shelf, and turned to her brother.
“What nice things do they hear me say?”
“That he is so handsome; that he has such a good disposition; that he is the very best young man in the place; that you should think every girl would be head over heels in love with him ”