In a dangerously calm voice she inquired, "What's the rest then?"
"She's a trouble-maker," he asserted in a shaking tone over which he seemed to have no command; "she came back to Greenstream and for no reason but her own slinked into our happiness. Your whole family—even Hosmer, pretending to be so wise—are blind as bats. You can't even see that Phebe's hair is as dyed as her stories. She says she is on the stage, but it's a pretty stage! I've been to Stanwick and seen those Parisian Dainties and burlesque shows. They're nothing but a lot of half-naked women cavorting and singing fast songs. And the show only begins—with most of them—when the curtain drops. If I even try to think of you in that I get sick."
"Go on," Hannah stammered, scarcely above her breath.
"It's bad," Calvin Stammark went on. "The women are bad; and a bad woman is something awful. I know about that too. I've been to the city as well as Phebe. Oh, Hannah," he cried, "can't you see, can't you!" With a violent effort he regained the greater part of his composure. "But it won't touch you," he added; "we're going to be married right away."
"We are?" Hannah echoed him thinly, in bitter mockery. "I wouldn't have you now if you were the last man on earth with the way you talked about Phebe! I don't see how you can stand there and look at me. If I told pa or Hosmer they would shoot you. You might as well know this as well—I'm going back with her; it'll be some gayer than these lonely old valleys or your house stuck
