Their noses were blue with cold, for the wind whistled through the broken panes of the attic windows. Early that morning Agnes had started on her weekly trip to town to the Sentinel's office. Her face was white and set, and she had passed a sleepless night. The day before, her manuscript, that was to have made the fortunes of her little world, was returned to her from the publishers. It was more than a disappointment to the three who had counted so confidently upon its success. It was almost a tragedy in the shattering of such high hopes. An intangible sense of loss had weighed on their spirits ever since, almost as if some one lay dead in the great empty parlours below.
It was a desire to rid themselves of the strange feeling of desolation that brooded over the familiar rooms that sent the girls to the attic as soon as Agnes left. Mam Daphne had brought the mail, as she often did in rainy weather, and gone again. The sight of the letter addressed to Agnes had given rise to Wilma's usual supposition, and then silence followed for nearly an hour. It was broken by a sudden thundering of the griffin's head against the great front door. The girls' hearts seemed to leap up in their throats. They had not heard that sound since the June day of Mrs. Gorham's visit.
"Tom!" ejaculated Wilma, in a terrified whisper, looking wildly into Claribel's startled eyes. "Oh, we can't let him in! Neither of us is fit to go down, and there isn't a spark of fire in this big barn of a house, even in the kitchen stove."
"I can't go," announced Claribel. "I am simply covered with feathers. It will take an hour at least to pick them off."
Wilma held up two grimy hands, and pointed to the front breadth of her wrapper, which had been torn to ribbons on a lurking nail.
"Do you think he would recognise in either of us one of the 'charming girls of Marchmont' that his mother painted?"
"Maybe it's only a book-agent after all," suggested Claribel, hopefully. But the knocking sounded again, and Wilma shook her head.
"No, there was that letter to sister, you know, and it sounds just as I've imagined Tom would knock, from what his mother told of him—so peremptory and lordly, somehow, as if he wouldn't take no for an answer."
"What shall we do?" groaned Claribel, desperately. "Even if we were fit to go down, there's nothing but bread and tea for lunch. Oh, if sister were only home!"