45
least I’ll see that she goesI"
"Don’t meddle with me, Martha!” exclaimed Frank angrily. "I can
look after my own affairs. Hae ye forgotten already what my father brought
ye here for?"
The old woman raised her hands to her head as if she had been struck.
"Wilt thou afflict the widow or fatherless child? If thou afflict them
in any wise, and they cry at all unto me, 1 will surely hear their cry
she intoned in a dull voice.
"Ah, give mo none of your bibical oant!” cried Frank, beside himself
with anger and shame at what he had said.
Hamilton struck the table with his open hand. "That’s mair them
enough!” he shouted. He turned to Martha who had seated herself at the
fire and was rocking backwards and forwards in her chair. “Ye oanna
interfere wi* us, Martha. If you’re no happy hare, I’m sorry, it seem
a wee thing tae leave us for. Nobody hinders ye going to church and after
today I’ll warrant ye that you’ll no walk home again. As he said this
he looked at his brother, but Frank stood gating sullenly out of the door.
The younger brother’s anger was really not so much at Martha’s presumption
as at the fear of being haltered again, Andrew had not been a tyrranical
father but he had always commanded implicit obedience from his sons. In
doing so ho had been strengthened by affection and usage. But at his
death, Frank had felt himself a free roan, his own meter. Without
anything having been said between them, his word was as good as Hanilton’s
on the farm. An" he possessed an undisputed delight which he hugged in
secret glee, the enjoyment of Sarah. So when Martha, a stranger, and a
servant, upbraided him, it was like a stranger’s
hand on the neck of a wicked and restive horse.
