Sink or Swim? , Volume III by Matilda Charlotte Houstoun

The sun rose bright and cloudless on the day following Honor's return; / and John Beacham, whose hands were, as usual, brimful of business, and / who moreover had decided, after a short consultation with himself, that / his womankind were more likely to come to a good understanding without / him, betook himself, immediately after breakfast, to the hay-fields, / which were ripe for the scythe, and only waited the master's fiat to lie / in promising swaths upon the rich meadow-land which called John Beacham / owner.

Honor saw him depart with a weary sigh. The prospect of a lengthened / _tête-à-tête_ with the stern old lady, whose brow never relaxed for a / passing moment from its rigidity, and who had not even vouchsafed a / distant "good-morning" in answer to her civil greeting, was a penance / which it almost made her blood run cold to think of. Her own / courage -- the temporary boldness which was the offspring of hurt feeling / and great but temporary excitement -- had oozed out either at the ends of / her taper fingers, or with the tears with which she had watered her / morning pillow. When she found herself alone with her dreaded foe, poor / Honor had not -- as the saying goes -- a word to throw at a dog; she was in / the mood to cry her eyes out, and in the temper to long earnestly for / pity and tenderness. One kind and encouraging word, one look even of / sympathy, would have brought the poor thing on her knees before her / natural enemy, and all might have been well between the pair whom God / had joined together in bonds that nought save sin could sever.