What Necessity Knows - Lily Dougall (readera ebook reader txt) 📗

a pout, and from a pout into tears. "I _don't_ care, so now. I think he was much nicer--much nicer than--" She sat upon a chair and kicked her little toes upon the ground. Red's dimpled face was flushing with ominous colour about the eyes.

"Really!" cried Sophia, and then she stopped, arrested by her own word. How was it possible to present reality to eyes that looked out through such maze of ignorance and folly; it seemed easier to take up a sterner theme and comment upon the wickedness of disobedience and secrecy. Yet all the time her words missed the mark, because the true sin of these two pretty criminals was utter folly. Surely if the world, and their fragment of it, had been what they thought--the youth a hero, and their parents wrongly proud--their action had not been so wholly evil! But how could she trim all the thoughts of their silly heads into true proportion?

"I shall have to tell papa, you know; I couldn't take the responsibility of not telling him; but I won't speak till this press of work is over, because he is so tired, so you can be thinking how you will apologise to him."

Both Blue and Red were weeping now, and Sophia, feeling that she had made adequate impression, was glad to pause.

Red was the first to withdraw her handkerchief from dewy eyes. Her tone and attitude seemed penitent, and Sophia looked at her encouragingly.

"Sister Sophia"--meekly--"does he say in his letter where he is, or--or"--the voice trembled--"if he's ever coming back?"

For such disconsolate affection Sophia felt that the letter referred to was perhaps the best medicine. "I will read you all that he says." And she read it slowly and distinctly, as one reads a lesson to children.


"Dear Eliza."


"He didn't think she was 'dear'" pouted Blue. "He told us she was 'real horrid.'"

Sophia read on from the crumpled sheet with merciless distinctness.


"Come to think of it, when I was coming off I threw all my
bills and letters and things down in a heap in the back kitchen at
Harmon's; and there were some letters there that those 'cute little
Rexford girls wrote to me. They were real spoony on me, but I wasn't
spoony on them one bit, Eliza, at least, not in my heart, which having
been given to you, remained yours intact; but I sort of feel a qualm
to think how their respected pa would jaw them if those _billets-doux_
were found and handed over. You can get in at the kitchen window
quite easy by slipping the bolt with a knife; so as I know you have
a hankering after the Rexfords, I give you this chance to crib those
letters if you like. They are folded small because they had to be
put in a nick in a tree, called by those amiable young ladies, a
post-office."

"I'm real sorry I made you cry, Eliza. It's as well I didn't remain or I
might have begun admiring of you again, which might have ended in
breaking my vow to be--Only your ex-admirer,
CYRIL, P. H----."


"Oh!" cried Blue, her tears dried by the fire of injury, "we never talked to him except when he talked to us--never!"

"There's a postscript," said Sophia, and then she read it.


"P.S. They used to cock their eyes at me when they saw me over
the fence. You had better tell them not to do it; I could not bear to
think of them doing it to anyone else."


"Oh!" cried Red, "Oh--h! he never said to us that we cocked our eyes. He said once to Blue that the way she curled her eyelashes at him was _real_ captivating."

Sophia rose delivering her final word: "Nothing could be more utterly vulgar than to flirt with a young man who is beneath you in station just because he happens to be thrown in your way."


CHAPTER XII.

When Sophia went to the hotel next morning, Eliza was not to be found. She was not in, and no one knew where she was. Mr. Hutchins was inclined to grumble at her absence as an act of high-handed liberty, but Miss Rexford was not interested in his comments. She went back to her work at home, and felt in dread of the visit which she had arranged for Alec Trenholme to make that day. She began to be afraid that, having no information of importance with which to absorb his attention, he might to some extent make a fool of himself. Having seen incipient signs of this state of things, she took for granted it would grow.

When the expected caller did come, Sophia, because the servant could still do but little, was at work in the dairy, and she sent one of the children to ask him to come into the yard. The dairy was a pleasant place; it was a long low stone room, with two doors opening on the green yard. The roof of it was shaded by a tree planted for that purpose, and not many feet from its end wall the cool blue river ran. A queen could not have had a sweeter place for an audience chamber, albeit there was need of paint and repairs, and the wooden doorstep was almost worn away.

Sophia, churn-handle in hand, greeted her visitor without apology. She had expected that this churn-handle, the evidence of work to be done, would act as a check upon feeling, but she saw with little more than a glance that such check was superfluous; there was no sign of intoxication from the wine of graciousness which she had held to his lips when last she saw him. As he talked to her he stood on the short white clover outside the door's decaying lintel. He had a good deal to say about Bates, and more about Sissy Cameron, and Sophia found that she had a good deal to say in answer.

The churn was a hideous American patent, but light and very convenient. They talked to the monotonous splash of the milk within, and as work was not being interrupted, Alec was at length asked to sit down on the worn doorstep, and he remained there until the butter "came." He had gone up in Sophia's esteem many degrees, because she saw now that any escape of warmer sentiment had been involuntary on his part. She blessed him in her heart for being at once so susceptible and so strong. She fancied that there was a shade of sadness in his coolness which lent it attraction. With that shadow of the epicurean which is apt to be found upon all civilised hearts, she felt that it did her good to realise how nice he was, just as a fresh flower or a strong wind would have done her good. She said to him that she supposed he would not be staying much longer in Chellaston, and he replied that as soon as Bates would go and his brother was on his feet again he intended to leave for the West. Then he begged her to lose no time in seeing Eliza, for Bates had taken to hobbling about the roads, and he thought a sudden and accidental meeting with the girl might be the death of him.

Now this assertion of Alec's, that Bates had taken to walking out of doors, was based on the fact told him by Mrs. Martha and his brother, that the day before Bates had wilfully walked forth, and after some hours came back much exhausted. "Where did you go?" Alec had asked him fiercely, almost suspecting, from his abject looks, that he had seen the girl. He could, however, learn nothing but that the invalid had walked "down the road and rested a while and come back." Nothing important had happened, Alec thought; and yet this conclusion was not true.

That which had happened had been this. John Bates, after lying for a week trying to devise some cunning plan for seeing Sissy without compromising her, and having failed in this, rose up in the sudden energy of a climax of impatience, and, by dint of short stages and many rests by the roadside, found his way through the town, up the steps of the hotel, and into its bar-room. No one could hinder him from going there, thought he, and perchance he might see the lassie.

Years of solitude, his great trouble, and, lastly, the complaint which rendered him so obviously feeble, had engendered in his heart a shyness that made it terrible to him to go alone across the hotel verandah, where men and women were idling. In truth, though he was obviously ill, the people noticed him much less than he supposed, for strangers often came there; but egotism is a knife which shyness uses to wound itself with. When he got into the shaded and comparatively empty bar-room, he would have felt more at home, had it not been for the disconsolate belief that there was one at home in that house to whom his presence would be terribly unwelcome. It was with a nightmare of pain and desolation on his heart that he laid trembling arms upon the bar, and began to chat with the landlord.

"I'm on the look-out for a young man and a young woman," said he, "who'll come and work on my clearing;" and so he opened talk with the hotel-keeper. He looked often through the door into the big passage, but Sissy did not pass.

Now Mr. Hutchins did not know of anyone to suit Bates's requirements, and he did know that the neighbourhood of Chellaston was the most unlikely to produce such servants, but, having that which was disappointing to say, he said it by degrees. Bates ordered a glass of cooling summer drink, and had his pipe filled while they discussed. The one tasted to him like gall, and the fumes of the other were powerless to allay his growing trepidation, and yet, in desperate adventure, he stayed on.

Hutchins, soon perceiving that he was a man of some education, and finding out that he was the oft-talked-of guest of "The Principal," continued to entertain him cheerfully enough. "Now," said he, "talking of people to help, I've got a girl in my house now--well, I may say I fell on my feet when I got her." Then followed a history of his dealings with Eliza, including an account of his own astuteness in perceiving what she was, and his cleverness in securing her services. Bates listened hungrily, but with a pang in his heart.

"Aye," said he outwardly, "you'll be keeping a very quiet house here."

"You may almost call it a religious house," said Hutchins, taking the measure of his man. "Family prayer every Sunday in the dining-room for all who likes. Yes," he added, rubbing his hand on his lame knee, "Canadians are pious for the most part, Mr. Bates, and I have the illeet of two cities on _my_ balconies."

Other men came in and went out of the room. Women in summer gowns passed the door. Still Bates and Hutchins talked.

At last, because Bates waited long enough, Eliza passed the door, and catching sight of him, she turned, suddenly staring as if she knew not exactly what she was doing. There were two men at the bar drinking. Hutchins, from his high swivel chair, was waiting