I made no answer to this thrust, but as we passed through the passage, the door of father's room opened, and the voice of Mr. Hoad said, with a laugh: "No, I'm afraid you will never get any good out of him. A brilliant talker, a charming fellow, but no backbone in him. I was deceived in him myself at first, but he's no go. I should think the less any one reckoned on him for anything the better."
"You don't understand him," began father, warmly; but he stopped, seeing us.
My cheeks flushed with anger. There was a grin on Deborah's face, but my sister's was serene.
She could not have understood.
CHAPTER XIII.
Joyce had been gone a week before Mr. Trayton Harrod arrived. I had preserved my gloomy silence on the subject of his coming, although I was dying to know all about it; and as father had given in to my mood by telling me no particulars, it so happened that I did not even know the exact day of his arrival.
It was a Monday and baking-day. There was plenty to do now that Joyce was gone, and I did not do her work as she did it. Mother was constantly reminding me of the fact. It did not make me do the work any quicker, or like doing it any better; but, of course, it was natural that mother should see the difference, and remark on it.
At last, however, the baking and mending and dusting was all done, and mother gave me leave to take a little basket of victuals to an old couple who lived down by the sea. I had been very miserable, feeling pitiably how little I had done at present towards fulfilling my promise to Joyce of trying to make things pleasant, and sadly conscious that I was not in mother's good books, or for that matter, in father's either, for which I am afraid I cared more. He had scarcely spoken a word to me all the week.
Poor father! Why did I not remember that it was far worse for him than it was for me? But as I ran across the lawn, with Taff yelping at my heels, I do not believe that I gave a thought to his anxieties, although I must have seen his dear old head bending over the farm account-books through the study window as I passed. I was so glad to have done with the house-keeping that I forgot everything else in the tender sunshine of a May afternoon that was flecking the marsh with spots of light, shifting as the soft clouds shifted upon the blue sky. How could any troubles matter, either my own or other people's, when there was a chance of being within scent of the sea-weed and within taste of the salt sea-brine?