Andrew stopped. "What is it?" he asked, in a gruff voice. He felt at that moment savage with her and with fate. He felt like some badgered animal beneath the claws and teeth of petty enemies which were yet sufficient to do him to death. He felt that retreat and defence were alike impossible and inglorious. He was aware of a monstrous impatience with it all, which was fairly blasphemy. "What is it?" he said, and Fanny realized that something was wrong.
"Come here, Andrew Brewster," she said, from the bedroom window, and Andrew pressed close to the window through a growth of sweetbrier which rasped his hands and sent up a sweet fragrance in his face. Andrew tore away the clinging vines angrily.
"Don't spoil that bush, Ellen sets a lot by it," said Fanny. "What makes you act so, Andrew Brewster?" Then she lowered her voice. "She wants to know if she can have her pay to-night," she whispered.
"I 'ain't got a cent," replied Andrew, in a dogged, breathless voice.
"You 'ain't been to the bank to-day, then?"
Fanny still suspected nothing. She was, in fact, angry with the dressmaker for insisting upon her pay in such a fashion. "I never heard of such a thing as her wantin' to be paid every night," she whispered, angrily, "and I'd tell her so, if I wasn't afraid she'd think we couldn't pay her. I'd never have had her; I'd had Miss Patch, if I'd know she'd do such a mean thing, but, as it is, I don't know what to do. I 'ain't got but a dollar and seventy-three cents by me. You 'ain't got enough to make it up?"
"Well, all is, I've got to tell her that it ain't convenient for me to pay her to-night, and she shall have it all together to-morrow night, and to-morrow you'll have to go to the bank and take out the money, Andrew. Don't forget it."
Fanny retreated, and he heard her high voice explaining to Miss Higgins. He tore his way through the clinging sweetbrier bushes and ran with an unsteady, desperate gait down to the orchard behind his mother's home, and flung himself at full length in the dewy grass under the trees with all the abandon, under stress of fate, of a child.