20/34 Her manner was at once defiant and conciliatory. All the way from her distant village, in the rear gloom of the covered wagon, she had been composing it. She delivered it with an assumption of calm dignity, in spite of her angry red cheeks and her shaking voice. "Cousin Ann," said the little woman, "me and mine go nowhere where we are not invited. We came to the funeral--though you didn't see fit to even tell us when it was, and we only heard of it by accident from the butcher--out of respect to poor Abel. |