"Talk! It 's all talk with me--all snarling and railing and whining at
hard facts, like a viper wasting its venom on steel. I'm sick of
myself--weary of the old, stale round of my thoughts. Where can I wash
and be clean? Chrissy, for God's sake, tell me."

"Put your hope in the Spring," she said, "an' be busy for Will."


In reality, with the approach of Christmas, affairs between Phoebe and
the elder Grimbal had reached a point far in advance of that which
Clement and Chris were concerned with. For more than three months, and
under a steadily increasing weight of opposition, Miller Lyddon's
daughter fought without shadow of yielding. Then came a time when the
calm but determined iteration of her father's desires and the
sledge-hammer love-making of John Grimbal began to leave an impression.
Even then her love for Will was bright and strong, but her sense of
helplessness fretted her nerves and temper, and her sweetheart's laconic
messages, through the medium of another man, were sorry comfort in this
hour of tribulation. With some reason she felt slighted. Neither
considering Will's peculiarities, nor suspecting that his silence was
only, the result of a whim or project, she began to resent it. Then John
Grimbal caught her in a dangerous mood. Once she wavered, and he had the
wisdom to leave her at the moment of victory. But on the next occasion
of their meeting, he took good care to keep the advantage he had gained.
Conscious of his own honest and generous intentions, Grimbal went on his
way. The subtler manifestations of Phoebe's real attitude towards him
escaped his observation; her reluctance he set down as resulting from
the dying shadow of affection for Will Blanchard. That she would be very
happy and proud and prosperous in the position of his wife, the lover