For millions of us can in a measure read the future, yet it is unchanged. We know that certain consequences inevitably follow certain actions. Yet we commit the actions. We know that result follows cause, yet we do not eliminate the cause. If we could be more specific in our reading than this, would our lives be much different? One is permitted doubts.
The train, due to the traffic disturbances caused by the blizzard, left the Grand Central several minutes behind its scheduled time. It lost more time en route, and the hour was close to midnight when Clancy and Mrs. Walbrough emerged from the Hinsdale station and entered a sleigh, driven by a sleepy countryman who, it transpired, was the Walbrough caretaker. It was after midnight, and after a bumpy ride, that the two women descended from the sleigh and tumbled up the stairs that led to a wide veranda. The house was ablaze in honor of their coming. It was warm, too, not merely from a furnace, but from huge open fires that burned down-stairs and in the bedroom to which Clancy was assigned.
The motherly wife of the caretaker had warm food and hot drink waiting them, but Clancy hardly tasted them. She was sleepy, and soon she left Mrs. Walbrough to gossip with her housekeeper while she tumbled into bed.
Sleep came instantly. Hardly, it seemed, had her eyes closed before they opened. Through the raised window streamed sunlight. But Clancy was more conscious of the cold air that accompanied it. It was as cold here as it was in Maine. At least, it seemed so this morning. She was quite normal. She was not the sort of person who leaps gayly from bed and performs calisthenics before an opened window in zero weather. Instead, she snuggled down under the bedclothes until her eyes and the tip of her nose were all that showed. One glimpse of her breath, smoky in the frosty air, had made a coward of her.
But sometimes hopes are realized. Just as she had made up her mind to brave the ordeal and arise and close the window, she heard a knock upon the door.
"Come in. Oh, pul-lease come in!" she cried.
Mrs. Walbrough entered, followed by the housekeeper, who, Clancy had learned last night, was named Mrs. Hebron. Mrs. Walbrough closed the window, chaffing Clancy because a Maine girl should mind the cold, and Mrs. Hebron piled wood in the fireplace. By the time that Clancy emerged from the bathroom—she hated to leave it; the hot water in the tub made the whole room pleasantly steamy—her bedroom was warm. And Mrs. Walbrough had found somewhere a huge bath robe of the judge's which swamped Clancy in its woolen folds.
There were orange juice and toast and soft-boiled eggs and coffee made as only country people can make it. It had been made, Clancy could tell from the taste, by putting plenty of coffee in the bottom of a pot, by filling the pot with cold water, by letting it come to a boil, removing it after it had bubbled one minute, and serving it about ten seconds after that. All this was set upon a table drawn close to the fire.
"Why," said Clancy aloud, "did I ever imagine that I didn't care for the country in the winter?"
Mrs. Walbrough laughed.