Sunday and we can fix it up then. Or I'll drive you down to Hepburn to
the Justice, and get it done there. I'll do whatever you say." His
eyes fell under the merciless stare she continued to fix on him, and
he shifted his weight uneasily from one foot to the other. As he
stood there before her, unwieldy, shabby, disordered, the purple veins
distorting the hands he pressed against the desk, and his long orator's
jaw trembling with the effort of his avowal, he seemed like a hideous
parody of the fatherly old man she had always known.

"Marry you? Me?" she burst out with a scornful laugh. "Was that what you
came to ask me the other night? What's come over you, I wonder? How long
is it since you've looked at yourself in the glass?" She straightened
herself, insolently conscious of her youth and strength. "I suppose
you think it would be cheaper to marry me than to keep a hired girl.
Everybody knows you're the closest man in Eagle County; but I guess
you're not going to get your mending done for you that way twice."

Mr. Royall did not move while she spoke. His face was ash-coloured and
his black eyebrows quivered as though the blaze of her scorn had blinded
him. When she ceased he held up his hand.

"That'll do--that'll about do," he said. He turned to the door and took
his hat from the hat-peg. On the threshold he paused. "People ain't been
fair to me--from the first they ain't been fair to me," he said. Then he
went out.

A few days later North Dormer learned with surprise that Charity had
been appointed librarian of the Hatchard Memorial at a salary of eight
dollars a month, and that old Verena Marsh, from the Creston Almshouse,
was coming to live at lawyer Royall's and do the cooking.