That evening Charlotte sat
on the door-step in the soft spring twilight. Her mother had just
come home from her sister Hannah Berry's. "Thomas Payne went this
afternoon," her mother said, standing before her.
"Did he?" said Charlotte.
"You might have had him if you hadn't stuck to a poor stick that
ain't fit to tie your shoes up!" Sarah cried out, with sudden
bitterness. Her voice sounded like Hannah Berry's. Charlotte knew
that was just what her aunt Hannah had said about it.
"I don't ask him to tie my shoes up," returned Charlotte.
"You can stan' up for him all you want to," said her mother. "You
know he's a poor tool, an' he's treatin' you mean. You know he can't
begin to come up to a young man like Thomas Payne."
"Thomas Payne don't want me, and I don't want him; don't talk any
more about it, mother."
"I think somebody ought to talk about it," said her mother, and she
pushed roughly past Charlotte into the house.
Charlotte sat on the door-step a long while. "If Thomas Payne has got
anybody out West, I guess she'll be glad to see him," she thought.
The fancy pained her, and yet she seemed to see Thomas Payne and
Barney side by side, the one like a young prince--handsome and
stately, full of generous bravery--the other vaguely crouching
beneath some awful deformity, pitiful yet despicable in the eyes of
men, and her whole soul cleaved to her old lover.
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