Old Martha Crossley will let me hev a room, and thou will get on varry well without me. I can see that, my lad."
For it wounded her terribly that Steve made scarcely a decent opposition to this plan, though in reality he was more thoughtless than heartless in the matter. Only, when thoughtlessness wounds love, it is a cruel sin, and Sarah was in a state of rebellious grief the next two weeks. But she cleaned the cottage with an almost superfluous care, though the whitewashing and scrubbing and polishing had all to be done between mill hours. The bitter tears she shed over the work she permitted no human eye to see, for she was well aware that her grief would be little understood, would even, perhaps, be imputed to selfish and unworthy motives.
Yet the simple fact of Steve's marriage was not what hurt her. She had expected that event, bad looked forward to it, and begun to love the girl she had hoped would have been his choice, a good, industrious girl, with whom she would have gladly shared her brother's love and the comfortable home her labor and economy had made. But Joyce Barnes, a gay, idle, extravagant lass of seventeen years, whose highest
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