Mrs. Jim Jones stared.

“Nobody asked you to,” repeated Sylvia.  “Nobody is feeling at all bad here.  It’s true we’ve plenty, so Mr. Whitman don’t need to lift his finger, if he don’t want to, but a man can’t set down, day in and day out, and suck his thumbs when he’s been used to working all his life.  Some folks are lazy by choice, and some folks work by choice.  Mr. Whitman is one of them.”

Mrs. Jim Jones felt fairly defrauded.  “Then you don’t feel bad?” said she, in a crestfallen way.

“Nobody feels bad here,” said Sylvia.  “I guess nobody in East Westland feels bad unless it’s you, and nobody wants you to.”

After Mrs. Jim Jones had gone, Sylvia went into her bedroom and sat down in a rocking-chair by the one window.  Under the window grew a sweetbrier rose-bush.  There were no roses on it, but the soothing perfume of the leaves came into the room.  Sylvia sat quite still for a while.  Then she got up and went into the sitting-room with her mouth set hard.

When Rose had returned she had greeted her as usual, and in reply to her question where Uncle Henry was, said she guessed he must be at Mr. Meeks’s; there’s where he generally was when he wasn’t at home.

It did not occur to Sylvia that she was lying, not even when, later in the afternoon, Horace came home, and she answered his question as to her husband’s whereabouts in the same manner.  She had resolved upon Sidney Meeks’s as a synonyme for the shoe-shop.  She knew herself that when she said Mr. Meeks’s she in reality meant the shoe-shop.  She did not worry about others not having the same comprehension as herself.  Sylvia had a New England conscience, but, like all New England consciences, it was susceptible of hard twists to bring it into accordance with New England will.

The thunder-tempest, as Sylvia termed it, continued.  She kept glancing, from her station of safety, at the streaming windows.  She was becoming very much worried about Henry.  At last she saw a figure, bent to the rainy wind, pass swiftly before the side windows of the sitting-room.  She was on her feet in an instant, although at that minute the room was filled with blue flame followed by a terrific crash.  She ran out into the kitchen and flung open the door.

“Come in quick, for mercy’s sake!” she called.  Henry entered.  He was dripping with rain.  Sylvia did not ask a question.  “Stand right where you are till I bring you some dry clothes,” she said.

Henry obeyed.  He stood meekly on the oil-cloth while Sylvia hurried through the sitting-room to her bedroom.

“Mr. Whitman has got home from Mr. Meeks’s, and he’s dripping wet,” she said to Horace and Rose.  “I am going to get him some dry things and hang the wet ones by the kitchen stove.”

When she re-entered the kitchen with her arms full, Henry cast a scared glance at her.  She met it imperturbably.

“Hurry and get off those wet things or you’ll catch your death of cold,” said she.