“Well, here goes,” announced Ernestine. “The little Christian martyr bids a last bye-bye to her fond family.” And she turned and ran from the room.
She found Mrs. Hudson packing.
“You know I did not mean to tumble downstairs, Mrs. Hudson,” she told me later that she said:—“and I’m sorry that I had the pitcher with me. I was taking it up to your room for Mrs. Bo-gardus.”
“You seemed to be coming down the stairs when we met you,” returned Mrs. Hudson, suspiciously.
“Yes,” confessed Ernie. “I know it. I had brought up only one glass. I was going back for another, and my foot tripped.”
“Well,” returned Mrs. Hudson, evidently quite unmollified, “we will say no more about it. For a long time I have felt that a change would be desirable. Yesterday’s incident simply confirmed me in my half-formed resolution. I am going from here to stop with a Friend for a day or two, till I can look around and get more comfortably settled.”
“I hope you will have a good time, I’m sure,” observed Ernie, forgivingly. “But I wouldn’t want to visit her.”
Mrs. Hudson stared. “You?” she queried. “Oh, my dear!”
And directly after lunch she left us, and Ernie started in on a wild hunt for “the dump-cart contract.” To look for the contract is Ernie’s last resource in times of trouble.
“It must be somewhere, Elizabeth,” she argues, “and why not about the house? We know perfectly well that father went especially to get it signed that afternoon. He wouldn’t have come away without it. Perhaps it’s poked in a bureau-drawer, or under the blotting-paper on his desk, or maybe even back of the cuckoo-clock!”