This must have been
the view that Vashti Mills took of the case; for one day not long afterward,
having met Darby at the cross-roads store where she was looking at some
pink calico, and where he had come to get some duck-shot and waterproof caps,
she turned on him publicly, and with flashing eyes and mantling cheeks,
gave him to understand that if she were a man he "would not have had
to fight two boys," and he would not have come off so well either.
If anything, this attack brought Darby friends, for he not only had whipped
the Mills boys fairly, and had fought only when they had pressed him, but had,
as has been said, declined to fight old man Mills under gross provocation;
and besides, though they were younger than he, the Mills boys
were seventeen and eighteen, and "not such babies either;
if they insisted on fighting they had to take what they got
and not send their sister to talk and abuse a man about it afterward."
And the weight of opinion was that, "that Vashti Mills was gettin'
too airified and set up anyways."
All this reached Mrs. Stanley, and was no doubt sweet to her ears.
She related it in her drawling voice to Darby as he sat in the door
one evening, but it did not seem to have much effect on him;
he never stirred or showed by word or sign that he even heard her,
and finally, without speaking, he rose and lounged away into the woods.
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