Everybody calls me a coward

"I won't let anybody come near the house," she said, "and you must have a cup of tea and a good sleep before I tell you all that father said. Just comfort yourself with the thought that he is going to 'overlook it' this time! After I carry up his luncheon, I shall stop at the store and ask Cephas to come out on the river bank for a few minutes. Then I shall proceed to say what I think of him for telling father where you went yesterday afternoon." "Don't blame Cephas!" Waitstill remonstrated. "Can't you see just how it happened? He and Uncle Bart were sitting in front of the shop when I drove by. When father came home and found the house empty and the horse not in the stall, of course he asked where I was, and Cephas probably said he had seen me drive up Saco Hill. He had no reason to think that there was any harm in that." "If he had any sense he might know that he shouldn't tell anything to father except what happens in the store," Patty insisted. "Were you frightened out in the barn alone last night, poor dear?" "I was too unhappy to think of fear and I was chiefly nervous about you, all alone in the house with father." "I didn't like it very much, myself! I buttoned my bedroom door and sat by the window all night, shivering and bristling at the least sound. Everybody calls me a coward, but I'm not! Courage isn't not being frightened; it's not screeching when you are frightened. Now, what happened at the Boyntons'?" "Patty, Ivory's mother is the most pathetic creature I ever saw!" And Waitstill sat up on the sofa, her long braids of hair hanging over her shoulders, her pale face showing the traces of her heavy weeping. "I never pitied any one so much in my whole life! To go up that long, long lane; to come upon that dreary house hidden away in the trees; to feel the loneliness and the silence; and then to know that she is living there like a hermit-thrush in a forest, without a woman to care for her, it is heart-breaking!" "How does the house look,--dreadful?" "No: everything is as neat as wax. She isn't 'crazy,' Patty, as we understand the word. Her mind is beclouded somehow and it almost seems as if the cloud might lift at any moment. She goes about like somebody in a dream, sewing or knitting or cooking. It is only when she talks, and you notice that her eyes really see nothing, but are looking beyond you, that you know there is anything wrong."