第70章 DEAR ANNIE(2)

When she entered the sitting-room her sisters, Imogen, Eliza, Jane, and Susan, were all there; also her father, Silas, tall and gaunt and gray. To the Hempsteads a thunder-storm partook of the nature of a religious ceremony. The family gathered to-gether, and it was understood that they were all offering prayer and recognizing God as present on the wings of the tempest. In reality they were all very nervous in thunder-storms, with the exception of Annie. She always sent up a little silent petition that her sisters and brother and father, and the horse and dog and cat, might escape danger, although she had never been quite sure that she was not wicked in including the dog and cat. She was surer about the horse because he was the means by which her father made pastoral calls upon his distant sheep.

Then afterward she just sat with the others and waited until the storm was over and it was time to open windows and see if the roof had leaked. To-day, however, she was intent upon the hay. In a lull of the tempest she spoke.

"It is a pity," she said, "that I was not able to get the hay cocked and the covers on."Then Imogen turned large, sarcastic blue eyes upon her. Imogen was considered a beauty, pink and white, golden-haired, and dimpled, with a curi-ous calculating hardness of character and a sharp tongue, so at variance with her appearance that people doubted the evidence of their senses.

"If," said Imogen, "you had only made Benny work instead of encouraging him to dawdle and finally to stop altogether, and if you had gone out directly after dinner, the hay would have been all raked up and covered."Nothing could have exceeded the calm and in-structive superiority of Imogen's tone. A mass of soft white fabric lay upon her lap, although she had removed scissors and needle and thimble to a safe distance. She tilted her chin with a royal air. When the storm lulled she had stopped praying.

Imogen's sisters echoed her and joined in the at-tack upon Annie.

"Yes," said Jane, "if you had only started earlier, Annie. I told Eliza when you went out in the yard that it looked like a shower."Eliza nodded energetically.

"It was foolish to start so late," said Susan, with a calm air of wisdom only a shade less exasperating than Imogen's.

"And you always encourage Benny so in being lazy," said Eliza.

Then the Reverend Silas joined in. "You should have more sense of responsibility toward your broth-er, your only brother, Annie," he said, in his deep pulpit voice.

"It was after two o'clock when you went out,"said Imogen.

"And all you had to do was the dinner-dishes, and there were very few to-day," said Jane.

Then Annie turned with a quick, cat-like motion.

Her eyes blazed under her brown toss of hair. She gesticulated with her little, nervous hands. Her voice was as sweet and intense as a reed, and withal piercing with anger.

"It was not half past one when I went out," said she, "and there was a whole sinkful of dishes.""It was after two. I looked at the clock," said Imogen.

"It was not."

"And there were very few dishes," said Jane.

"A whole sinkful," said Annie, tense with wrath.

"You always are rather late about starting," said Susan.

"I am not! I was not! I washed the dishes, and swept the kitchen, and blacked the stove, and cleaned the silver.""I swept the kitchen," said Imogen, severely.

"Annie, I am surprised at you."

"And you know I cleaned the silver yesterday,"said Jane.

Annie gave a gasp and looked from one to the other.

"You know you did not sweep the kitchen," said Imogen.

Annie's father gazed at her severely. "My dear,"he said, "how long must I try to correct you of this habit of making false statements?""Dear Annie does not realize that they are false statements, father," said Jane. Jane was not pretty, but she gave the effect of a long, sweet stanza of some fine poetess. She was very tall and slender and large-eyed, and wore always a serious smile. She was attired in a purple muslin gown, cut V-shaped at the throat, and, as always, a black velvet ribbon with a little gold locket attached. The locket con-tained a coil of hair. Jane had been engaged to a young minister, now dead three years, and he had given her the locket.

Jane no doubt had mourned for her lover, but she had a covert pleasure in the romance of her situation.

She was a year younger than Annie, and she had loved and lost, and so had achieved a sentimental distinction. Imogen always had admirers. Eliza had been courted at intervals half-heartedly by a widower, and Susan had had a few fleeting chances.

But Jane was the only one who had been really defi-nite in her heart affairs. As for Annie, nobody ever thought of her in such a connection. It was supposed that Annie had no thought of marriage, that she was foreordained to remain unwed and keep house for her father and Benny.

When Jane said that dear Annie did not realize that she made false statements, she voiced an opinion of the family before which Annie was always abso-lutely helpless. Defense meant counter-accusation.

Annie could not accuse her family. She glanced from one to the other. In her blue eyes were still sparks of wrath, but she said nothing. She felt, as always, speechless, when affairs reached such a junc-ture. She began, in spite of her good sense, to feel guiltily responsible for everything -- for the spoiling of the hay, even for the thunder-storm. What was more, she even wished to feel guiltily responsible.

Anything was better than to be sure her sisters were not speaking the truth, that her father was blaming her unjustly.

Benny, who sat hunched upon himself with the effect of one set of bones and muscles leaning upon others for support, was the only one who spoke for her, and even he spoke to little purpose.

"One of you other girls," said he, in a thick, sweet voice, "might have come out and helped Annie;then she could have got the hay in."

They all turned on him.

"It is all very well for you to talk," said Imogen.