Page:Caroline Lockhart--The Fighting Shepherdess.djvu/159

 And how she hated Priscilla Pantin!

Always Mrs. Toomey had had a quaint conceit that if she listened attentively she would be able to hear Priscilla's heart jingling in her body — rattling like a bit of ice in a tin bucket. Now the woman's mean, chaste little soul laid bare before her filled Delia Toomey with a dumb fury.

Mrs. Pantin waited patiently for her answer, though the experience was a new one. Usually she had only to reach for the whip when her satellites mutinied; almost never was it necessary to crack it.

While Mrs. Toomey hesitated Mrs. Pantin folded her work — this, too, was significant.

Mrs. Toomey replied, finally, in desperation :

" ril think over what you've said, Priscilla. I appreciate your intentions, thoroughly, believe me."

There was a cowed note in her voice which Mrs. Pantin detected. She smiled faintly.

" I don't know when I've spent such a delightful afternoon," and kissed her.

Mrs. Toomey curbed an impulse to bite her friend as she returned the parting salute.

" And I've so enjoyed having you," she murmured.

Mrs. Toomey turned pale when she looked through the front window and saw Kate, a few days after Mrs. Pantin's visit, dismount and tie her horse to the Cottonwood sapling, for the threat, which held for her all the import of a Ku-Klux warning, had been hanging over her like the sword of Damocles.

It had haunted her by day, and at night she could not sleep for thinking of it, and yet she was no nearer reaching a decision than when the struggle between her conscience and her cowardice had started.