THE STEADFAST HEART
you,’ he said. “Folks don’t calc’late to let me. Nobody’ll let me.”
She flushed angrily, quick to rise in defense of the oppressed. Lydia Canfield possessed a fiery sense of justice. “Then they ought to be ’shamed of theirselves. Playin’ with and goin’ to school is diff’runt things. You haven’t got a right to play with me, but you got a right to go to school.”
“But I dassent,” he said simply.
She said nothing. He waited and presently asked again, “Be you certain-sure goin’ away to school is standin’ up for myself?”
“Yes,” she said, “I’m certain-sure of it.”
He sighed and his shoulders drooped. “Then,” he said wearily, “I’ll have to tell him I’ll go.”
As he spoke a man, bearded, haggard, vicious of face, slouched out of the woods and stood leering down at the children. He was a squalid figure, one to shrink from with disgust. He cackled with jeering laughter.
“There you be, hey?” he said in a tone he meant to be humorous. “Wa-al now. Who’d ever thought I’d find you handy way out here! How be ye, Angy? Hain’t ye glad to see your ol’ pa that’s took sich resks jest to come after ye?”
Angus stood as though turned to stone, his
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