"Your mother's terrible set about it, Barney. You'd better go over to
Charlotte's and make up."
"I can't; it's all over," Barney said, in reply; and Caleb at length
plodded soberly and clumsily home.
After dinner he went out behind the barn, and Rebecca, going to feed
the hens, found him sitting under the wild-cherry tree, fairly
sobbing in his old red handkerchief.
She went near him, and stood looking at him with restrained sympathy.
"Don't feel bad, father," she said, finally. "Barney'll get over it,
and come to supper."
"No, he won't," groaned the old man--"no, he won't. He's jest like
your mother."
Chapter VI
The weeks went on, and still Barnabas had not yielded. The story of
his quarrel with Cephas Barnard and his broken engagement with
Charlotte had become an old one in Pembroke, but it had not yet lost
its interest. A genuine excitement was so rare in the little peaceful
village that it had to be made to last, and rolled charily under the
tongue like a sweet morsel. However, there seemed to be no lack now,
for the one had set others in motion: everybody knew how Barnabas
Thayer no longer lived at home, and did not sit in his father's pew
in church, but in the gallery, and how Richard Alger had stopped
going to see Sylvia Crane.
There was not much walking in the village, except to and from church
on a Sabbath day; but now on pleasant Sabbath evenings an occasional
couple, or an inquisitive old man with eyes sharp under white brows,
and chin set ahead like a pointer's, strolled past Sylvia's house and
the Thayer house, Barney's new one and Cephas Barnard's.
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