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Page 12
I am afraid that Mrs. Rylands did not offer all her thoughts. Ever
since Mr. Hamlin's departure she had been uneasy and excited,
sometimes falling into fits of dejection, and again lighting up
into hysterical levity; at other times carefully examining her
wardrobe, and then with a sudden impulse rushing downstairs again
to give orders for her husband's supper, and to make the
extraordinary changes in the sitting-room already noted. Only a
few moments before he arrived, she had covertly brought down a
piece of music, and put aside the hymn-books, and taken, with a
little laugh, a pack of cards from her pocket, which she placed
behind the already dismantled vase on the chimney.
"I reckoned you had company, Ellen," he said gravely, kissing her.
"No," she said quickly. "That is," she stopped with a sudden surge
of color in her face that startled her, "there was--a man--here, in
the kitchen--who had a lame horse, and who wanted to get a fresh
one. But he went away an hour ago. And he wasn't in this room--at
least, after it was fixed up. So I've had no company."
She felt herself again blushing at having blushed, and a little
terrified. There was no reason for it. But for Jack's warning,
she would have been quite ready to tell her husband all. She had
never blushed before him over her past life; why she should now
blush over seeing Jack, of all people! made her utter a little
hysterical laugh. I am afraid that this experienced little woman
took it for granted that her husband knew that if Jack or any man
had been there as a clandestine lover, she would not have blushed
at all. Yet with all her experience, she did not know that she had
blushed simply because it was to Jack that she had confessed that
she loved the man before her. Her husband noted the blush as part
of her general excitement. He permitted her to drag him into the
room and seat him before the hearth, where she sank down on one
knee to pull off his heavy rubber boots. But he waved her aside at
this, pulled them off with his own hands, and let her take them to
the kitchen and bring back his slippers. By this time a smile had
lighted up his hard face. The room was certainly more comfortable
and cheerful. Still he was a little worried; was there not in
these changes a falling away from the grace of self-abnegation
which she had so sedulously practiced?
When supper was served by Jane, in the dull dining-room, Mr.
Rylands, had he not been more engaged in these late domestic
changes, might have noticed that the Missouri girl waited upon him
with a certain commiserating air that was remarkable by its
contrast with the frigid ceremonious politeness with which she
attended her mistress. It had not escaped Mrs. Rylands, however,
who ever since Jack's abrupt departure had noticed this change in
the girl's demeanor to herself, and with a woman's intuitive
insight of another woman, had fathomed it. The comfortable tete-a-
tete with Jack, which Jane had looked forward to, Mrs. Rylands had
anticipated herself, and then sent him off! When Joshua thanked
his wife for remembering the pepper-sauce, and Mrs. Rylands
pathetically admitted her forgetfulness, the head-toss which Jane
gave as she left the room was too marked to be overlooked by him.
Mrs. Rylands gave a hysterical little laugh. "I am afraid Jane
doesn't like my sending away the expressman just after I had also
dismissed the stranger whom she had taken a fancy to, and left her
without company," she said unwisely.
Mr. Rylands did not laugh. "I reckon," he returned slowly, "that
Jane must feel kinder lonely; she bears all the burden of our bein'
outer the world, without any of our glory in the cause of it."
Nevertheless, when supper was over, and the pair were seated in the
sitting-room before the fire, this episode was forgotten. Mrs.
Rylands produced her husband's pipe and tobacco-pouch. He looked
around the formal walls and hesitated. He had been in the habit of
smoking in the kitchen.
"Why not here?" said Mrs. Rylands, with a sudden little note of
decision. "Why should we keep this room only for company that
don't come? I call it silly."
This struck Mr. Rylands as logical. Besides, undoubtedly the fire
had mellowed the room. After a puff or two he looked at his wife
musingly. "Couldn't you make yourself one of them cigarettys, as
they call 'em? Here's the tobacco, and I'll get you the paper."
"I COULD," she said tentatively. Then suddenly, "What made you
think of it? You never saw ME smoke!"
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