speech was still in his ears, and this rude girlish call seemed to
jar upon his sensibilities.

"The idea of any girl screeching out like that," he muttered. And if
he had carried speech as far as his thought, he would have added,
"when Evelina is a girl!"

He was so angry that he did not laugh when he heard his mother answer
back, in those conclusive tones of hers that were wont to silence all
argument: "It ain't anything. Don't be scared. I'm coming right
back." Mrs. Merriam scorned subterfuges. She took always a silent
stand in a difficulty, and let people infer what they would. When
Mary Ann Pease inquired if it was the cat that had made the noise,
she asked if her mother had finished her blue and white counterpane.

The two girls waited a half-hour longer, then they went home. "What
do you s'pose made that noise out in the kitchen?" asked Arabella
Mann of Mary Ann Pease, the minute they were out-of-doors.

"I don't know," replied Mary Ann Pease. She was a broad-backed young
girl, and looked like a matron as she hurried along in the dusk.

"Well, I know what I think it was," said Arabella Mann, moving ahead
with sharp jerks of her little dark body.

"What?"

"It was him."

"You don't mean--"