"We'll not attempt to straighten out anything to-night," said Miss Eunice, looking round wearily when the last sympathetic neighbour had departed in time to escape the breaking storm. She and Philippa had accepted Mrs. Sears's offer of her guest-chamber for the night. Macklin had gone home with the minister's son. Alec had had many invitations, but he refused them all. With a morbid feeling that because his carelessness caused the fire he ought to do penance and not allow himself to be comfortable, he pulled a pillow and a mattress from the pile of goods into the empty room adjoining, and threw himself down on that.
In the excitement of the scene through which he had just passed, he had entirely forgotten the engagement he had run away from. Now, as he stretched himself wearily out on the mattress, it flashed across his mind that he had failed to keep his appointment, and that the man had gone. A groan of disappointment escaped him.
"If I wasn't born to a dog's luck!" he exclaimed, "to miss a position like that just when we need it the most. Goodness only knows what we are going to do now. But I needn't say that. It's a hard world, and there's no goodness in it."
The next instant, he pulled the sheet over his eyes to shut out the blinding glare of lightning that lit up the empty room. The crash of thunder that followed seemed to his distorted fancy the defiant challenge of all the powers of darkness. All sorts of rebellious thoughts flocked through the boy's mind, as he lay there in the darkness of the empty room, thinking bitterly of his thwarted plans. Midnight always magnifies troubles, and as he brooded over his disappointments and railed at his fate, not only his past wrongs loomed up to colossal size, but a vague premonition of worse evil to come began to weigh on him. It was nearly morning before he dropped into a troubled sleep.
Refreshed by a long night's rest and the tempting breakfast Mrs. Sears spread for her three guests, Philippa soon recovered her usual gay spirits. The news that Alec had disclosed the night before, which sent her stunned and heart-sick to her retreat in the old apple-tree, had faded into the background in the excitement of the fire. She thought of it all the time she was dressing, but the keenness of her distress was not so overwhelming as it had been. It was like some old pain that had lost its worst sting in the healing passage of time.
She was young enough to take a keen pleasure in the novelty of the situation, and ran up-stairs and down with hammer and broom, laughing and joking over the settlement of every picture and piece of furniture with contagious good humour. Alec could not understand it. Even his Aunt Eunice was not as downcast as he had pictured her in the night, over the loss of her old home. With patient, steady effort, she moved along, bringing order out of confusion, and when Philippa's fresh young voice up-stairs broke out in the song that had come to be regarded as the family hymn, she joined in, at her work below, with a full, strong alto:
"Yet, in the maddening maze of things,
Though tossed by storm and flood,
To one fixed trust my spirit clings:
I know that God is good."
"Jine in, Br'er Stoker," called Philippa, laughingly waving her duster in the doorway. "Why don't you sing?"
Alec, who was prone on the floor, tacking down a bedroom carpet, hammered away without an answer. After waiting a minute, she dropped down on the floor beside him, upsetting a saucer full of tacks as she did so. "Say, Alec," she began, in a confidential tone, "what did the man at the hotel say last night? Is he going to take you?"
"Of course not," was the sulky reply. "You didn't suppose I'd be lucky enough for that, did you? I didn't even see him. Another fellow was there ahead of me, and the fire-alarm sounded while I waited, and then it was all up. I couldn't dally round waiting for an interview when our home was burning, could I?"