We knew very well that she must have been queer to Harry again. He would have been certain to walk home with her, if she would have let him. But—"all through the town, and up the hill, in the daylight! Or—stay to tea with him there, and make him come, in the dark!—And if he imagined that I knew!" We were as sure as if she had said it, that these were the things that were in her mind, and that these were what she had run away from. How she had done it we did not know; we had no doubt it had been something awful.
The next morning nobody called. Father came home to dinner and said Mr. Goldthwaite had told him that Harry was under orders,—to the "Katahdin."
In the afternoon Barbara went out and nailed up the woodbines. Then she put on her hat, and took a great bundle that had been waiting for a week for somebody to carry, and said she would go round to South Hollow with it, to Mrs. Dockery.
"You will be tired to death. You are tired already, hammering at those vines," said mother, anxiously. Mothers cannot help daughters much in these buzzes.
"I want the exercise," said Barbara, turning away her face that was at once red and pale. "Pounding and stamping are good for me." Then she came back in a hurry, and kissed mother, and then she went away.
CHAPTER XII.
EMERGENCIES.
