"Hush, Ann."
"Why should I hush?" she asked. "It's the truth."
"It's a lie, that's what it is," said Thomas.
"Do you hate me, Tom?" she said. And she sat looking steadily before
her.
"I don't know what's got into you. You act so queer."
"I want to be happy," she whispered.
"Then . . . you can do as you like for all of me."
But as they rode along in silence, wrapped in mist, she drew closer to
him, all her reckless spirit gone. "There . . . you've made me cry,"
she said, and put her hand, cold and moist, into his.
"Aren't you going to kiss me, Tom?"
He slapped the reins bitterly across his horse's back. "What's the
good of that?" he asked, in turn.
"Perhaps," she said faintly, "there isn't any. Oh, I don't know . . .
what's the difference?"
And so they rode on in silence, with pale cheeks and strange thoughts.
IV
MR. JEMINY BUILDS A HOUSE OUT OF BOXES
Mr. Jeminy liked to call on Mrs. Wicket, whose little cottage, at the
edge of the village, on the way to Milford, had belonged to Eben Wicket
for nearly fifty years.
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