"Hung!" repeated the old lady. "Who said anybody's friends were hung? It's false!" and the red mark around the lip wore a scarlet hue.
"Of course it's false," answered Jessie. "That's what I said. Nobody knows for certain that he stole, either," and forgetting her own belief, founded on her father's, Jessie tried to prove that Seth Marshall was as innocent as Walter himself had declared him to be.
"Whether he's guilty or not," returned Mrs. Bartow, "you are going home, and you're to have nothing to say to Walter. It would sound pretty, wouldn't it, for Mrs. Reeves to be telling that Jessie Graham liked a poor charity boy?"
Jessie was proud, and the last words grated harshly, but she would stand by Walter, and she replied:
"Mrs. Reeves forever! I believe you'd stop breathing if she said it was fashionable. I wonder who she was in her young days. Somebody not half so good as Walter, I dare say. I mean to ask Aunt Debby. She has lived since the flood, and knows the history of everybody that ever was born in New England, or out of it either, for that matter."
Mrs. Bartow was not inclined to doubt this after her own experience, and as in case there was anything about Mrs. Reeves, she wished to know it, she secretly hoped Jessie would carry her threat into execution. Just then they were summoned to supper, and following her granddaughter into the pleasant sitting-room, Mrs. Bartow frowned majestically upon Walter, bowed coldly to the other members of the family, and then took her seat, thinking to herself:
"The boy has a little of the Bellenger look, and, if anything, is handsomer than William."
The tea being passed, with the biscuit and butter and honey, and the cheese contemptuously refused by the city guest, Jessie said to Aunt Debby:
"Did you ever know anybody by the name of Gregory? That was Mrs. Reeves' maiden name, wasn't it, grandma?"
Mrs. Bartow nodded, and Aunt Debby, after withdrawing within herself for a moment, came out again and said:
"Yes, I knew Tim and Ben Gregory in Spencer. Ben was the best of the two, but he wa'n't none too likely. He had six boys, and Tim had six gals."
"What were their names?" asked Jessie, and Aunt Debby replied:
"There was Zeruah, and Lyddy, and Charlotty----"