He had a guilty feeling that this speech of the old lady's had somehow committed him beyond recall to Mirandy.

He did not see visions of breach-of-promise suits.
But he trembled at the thought of an avenging big brother.
"Hanner, you kin come along, too, ef you're a mind, when you git the dishes washed," said Mrs.Means to the bound girl, as she shut and latched the back door.

The Means family had built a new house in front of the old one, as a sort of advertisement of bettered circumstances, an eruption of shoddy feeling; but when the new building was completed, they found themselves unable to occupy it for anything else than a lumber room, and so, except a parlor which Mirandy had made an effort to furnish a little (in hope of the blissful time when somebody should "set up" with her of evenings), the new building was almost unoccupied, and the family went in and out through the back door, which, indeed, was the front door also, for, according to a curious custom, the "front" of the house was placed toward the south, though the "big road" (Hoosier for _highway_) ran along the north-west side, or, rather, past the north-west corner of it.
When the old woman had spoken thus to Hannah and had latched the door, she muttered, "That gal don't never show no gratitude fer favors;" to which Bud rejoined that he didn't think she had no great sight to be pertickler thankful fer.

To which Mrs.Means made no reply, thinking it best, perhaps, not to wake up her dutiful son on so interesting a theme as her treatment of Hannah.

Ralph felt glad that he was this evening to go to another boarding place.