Then the rich red flamed over Eva’s forehead and neck as well as her cheeks.  There was nothing covert about her, she would drag an ambushed enemy forth into the open field even at the risk of damaging disclosures regarding herself.

“Why don’t you say jest what you mean, right out, Jennie Stebbins?” she demanded.  “You are hintin’ that Fanny and me never had no education, and twittin’ us with it.”

“It wa’n’t our fault,” said Fanny, no less angrily.

“No, it wa’n’t our fault,” assented Eva.  “We had to quit school.  Folks can live with empty heads, but they can’t with empty stomachs.  It had to be one or the other.  If you want to twit us with bein’ poor, you can, Jennie Stebbins.”

“I haven’t said anything,” said Mrs. Stebbins, with a scared and injured air.  “I’d like to know what you’re making all this fuss about?  I don’t know.  What did I say?”

“If I’d said anything mean, I wouldn’t turn tail an’ run, I’d stick to it about one minute and a half, if it killed me,” said Eva, scornfully.

“You know what you was hintin’ at, jest as well as we do,” said Fanny; “but it ain’t so true as you and some other folks may think, I can tell you that.  If Eva and me didn’t go to school as long as some, we have always read every chance we could get.”

“That’s so,” said Eva, emphatically.  “I guess we’ve read enough sight more than some folks that has had a good deal more chance to read.  Fanny and me have taken books out of the library full as much as any of the neighbors, I rather guess.”

“We’ve read every single thing that Mrs. Southworth has ever written,” said Fanny, “and that’s sayin’ considerable.”

“And all Pansy’s and Rider Haggard’s,” declared Eva, with triumph.

“And every one of The Duchess and Marie Corelli, and Sir Walter Scott, and George Macdonald, and Laura Jean Libbey, and Charles Reade, and more, besides, than I can think of.”

“Fanny has read ’most all Tennyson,” said Eva, with loyal admiration; “she likes poetry, but I don’t very well.  She has read most all Tennyson and Longfellow, and we’ve both read Queechee, and St. Elmo, and Jane Eyre.”

“And we’ve read the Bible through,” said Fanny, “because we read in a paper once that that was a complete education.  We made up our minds we’d read it through, and we did, though it took us quite a while.”

“And we take Zion’s Herald, and The Rowe Gazette, and The Youth’s Companion,” said Eva.

“And we’ve both of us learned Ellen geography and spellin’ and ’rithmetic, till we know most as much as she does,” said Fanny.

“That’s so,” said Fanny.  “I snum, I believe I could get into the high-school myself, if I wasn’t goin’ to git married,” said Eva, with a gay laugh.  She was so happy in those days that her power of continued resentment was small.  The tide of her own bliss returned upon her full consciousness and overflowed, and crested, as with glory, all petty annoyances.