The next day, before Trenholme had had time to devise a plan for seeing
Miss Rexford, Mrs. Martha brought him a telegram. She watched him as he
drew his finger through the poor paper of the envelope, watched him as
one might watch another on the eve of some decisive event; yet she could
not have expected much from a telegram--they came too often.
"Ha!" cried Trenholme, "we are going to have visitors, Mrs. Martha."
A good deal to Trenholme's surprise, the message was from Alec, and from
a point no further away than Quebec. It stated that he was there with
Bates, who was ill, and he thought the best thing would be to bring him
with him to Chellaston, if his brother had house-room enough.
The answers we give to such appeals are more often the outcome of
life-long habit than instances of separate volition. No question of what
answer to send occurred to Trenholme's mind as he pencilled his reply,
assuring a welcome to the sick man.
When the answer was despatched he saw that, as fate had thrust the
notice of this arrival between him and the proposed interview with
Sophia; it would be better, after all, to wait only a day or two more,
until he knew his brother's mind.
He heard nothing more from Alec that day. The day after was Saturday,
and it rained heavily.
"What time will the gentlemen arrive?" asked Mrs. Martha, but not as if
she took much interest in the matter.
"I can't tell," he replied. "They will probably let us know; but it's
best to be ready when guests may come any time, isn't it?"
He asked her this with a cheering smile, because her manner was strange,
and he wished to rouse her to a sense of her duties.
"Yes, sir; 'twouldn't seem like as if we was truly expecting and hoping
unless we did our best to be ready."
The fervour of her answer surprised him.
For some time past Winifred Rexford had been spending part of each
morning learning housewifery of Mrs. Martha. That day, because of the
rain, Trenholme insisted upon keeping her to dinner with him. He brought
her into his dining-room with playful force, and set her at the head of
his table. It was a great pleasure to him to have the child. He twitted
her with her improvement in the culinary art, demanding all sorts of
impossible dishes in the near future for his brother's entertainment. He
was surprised at the sedateness of her answers, and at a strange look of
excited solicitude that arose in her eyes. It seemed to him that she was
several times on the point of saying something to him, and yet she did
not speak.
"What is it, Princess Win?" he cried. "What is in your mind, little
one?"
He came to the conclusion that she was not very well. He got no
information from her on the subject of her health or anything else; but
thinking naturally that the change in the weather might have given her
cold, he took pains to wrap her in his own mackintosh and take her home
under his own large umbrella.
When there, he went in. He was greatly cheered by the idea that,
although he might not tell his mind that day, he was now and henceforth
courting Sophia openly, whatever befell; but the open courting, since it
had only begun with his resolution of yesterday, and existed only in his
own intention, was naturally not recognised. He was received with the
ordinary everyday friendliness. But a change had occurred in the family
circumstances, nothing less than that they sat now in the long neglected
and still unfurnished room which went by the name of the drawing-room.
The windows had been thrown open, and the covering taken from the family
carriage. There it stood, still wheelless, but occupied now by Sophia
and Mrs. Rexford, the girls and the darning basket, while some of the
children climbed upon the box. Blue and Red, who were highly delighted
with the arrangement, explained it to Trenholme.
"You see, we had a carriage we couldn't use, and a room we couldn't use
for want of furniture; so this rainy day, when we all were so tired of
the other room, mamma suddenly thought that we'd make the carriage do
for furniture. It's the greatest fun possible." They gave little jumps
on the soft cushions, and were actually darning with some energy on
account of the change.
Trenholme shook hands with the carriage folk in the gay manner necessary
to the occasion, but his heart ached for the little mother who had thus
so bravely buried her last vestige of pride in the carriage by giving it
to her children as a plaything.
"It's more comfortable than armchairs, and keeps the feet from the bare
floor," she said to him, in defiance of any criticisms he might have in
mind. But all his thought was with and for her, and in this he was
pleased to see that he had divined Sophia's mind, for, after adding her
warm but brief praise to the new arrangement, she changed the subject.
Winifred went upstairs quietly. Trenholme suggested that he hardly
thought her looking quite well.
"She's an odd child," said Sophia. "I did not tell you, mamma, what I
found her doing the other day. She was trying on the white frock she had
this spring when she was confirmed. It's unlike her to do a thing like
that for no reason; and when I teased her she began to cry, and then
began speaking to me about religion. She has been puzzled by the views
your housekeeper holds, Mr. Trenholme, and excited by old Cameron's
teaching about the end of the world."
"I don't think it's the end of the world he's prophesying exactly," said
Trenholme, musingly. "The Adventists believe that the earth will not be
ruined, but glorified by the Second Advent."
"Children should not hear of such abstruse, far-off things," observed
Mrs. Rexford; "it does harm; but with no nursery, no schoolroom, what
can one do?"
Trenholme told them of Alec's telegram, and something of what he knew
concerning Bates. His own knowledge was scanty, but he had not even said
all he might have said when Mrs. Rexford politely regretted that her
husband and son, taking advantage of the rain, had both gone to the next
town to see some machinery they were buying, and would be away over
Sunday, otherwise they would not have missed the opportunity offered by
Sunday's leisure to call upon the newcomers.
"Oh, he's quite a common working-man, I fancy," added Trenholme,
hastily, surprised at the gloss his words had thrown on Bates's
position, and dimly realising that his way of putting things might
perhaps at some other times be as misleading as it had just that moment
been.
Then he went away rather abruptly, feeling burdened with the further
apologies she made with respect to Alec.