Ann, who was waiting anxiously, eager to get through with the talk she
dreaded, went at once into the library. Penhallow rising threw his cigar
into the fire. She laughed, but not in her usual merry way, and cried,
"Do smoke, James, I shall not mind it; I am forever disciplined to any
fate. There is a spittoon in the hall--a spittoon!"
The Squire laughed joyously, and kissed her. "I can wait for my pipe; we
can't have any lapse in domestic discipline." Then he added, "I hear that
my good Josiah has gone away--I may as well say, run away."
"Yes--he has gone, James." She hesitated greatly troubled.
"And you helped him--a runaway slave--you--" He smiled. It had for him an
oddly humorous aspect.
"I did--I did--" and the little lady began to sob like a child. "It
was--was wrong--" There was nothing comic in it for Ann Penhallow.
"You angel of goodness," he cried, as he caught her in his arms and held
the weeping face against his shoulder, "my brave little lady!"
"I ought not to have done it--but I did--I did--oh, James! To think that
my cousin should have brought this trouble on us--But I did--oh, James!"
"Listen, my dear. If I had been here, I should have done it. See what you
have saved me. Now sit down and let us have it all out, my dear, all of
it.
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