looked fiercely at her daughter as she turned, holding her little lamp,
which cast a glorifying reflection upon her face, into the parlor whence
led her little bedroom.

"You are a good-for-nothin' girl," she said. "You ought to be ashamed of
yourself."

"What do you mean, mother?" asked Sarah. She stood fair and white,
confronting her mother, who was burning and coarse with wrath.

"You talk about things you and him know that the rest of us can't talk
about. You take advantage because your father and me sent you to school
where you could learn more than we could. It wasn't my fault I didn't go
to school, and 'twa'n't his fault, poor man. He had to go to work and
get all that money he has." By the last masculine pronoun Mrs. Lynn
meant John Mangam.

Sarah had a spirit of her own, and she turned upon her mother, and for
the time the two faces looked alike, being swayed with one emotion.
"If," she said, "Mr. Ware and I had to regulate our conversation in
order to enable Mr. Mangam to talk with us, I am sure I don't know what
we could say. Mr. Mangam never talks, anyway."

"It ain't always the folks that talks that knows the most and is the
best," said Mrs. Lynn. Then her face upon her daughter's turned
malevolent, triumphant, and cruel. "I wa'n't goin' to tell you what I
heard when I was in Mis' Ketchum's this afternoon," she said. "I thought
at first I wouldn't, but now I'm goin' to."

"What do you mean, mother?" asked Sarah, in an angry voice; but she