As she jumped to her feet her movements had a fierceness of activity he had never before seen in her.
"That's all I want. I'm goin' back. Don't you say you seen me, or that I've been over here at all."
Hurrying to the street and springing into the car, she bade the hired man turn round again for home.
What happened between that Saturday and the next Tom never knew exactly. A few years later, when his powers of deduction had developed, he was able to surmise; but beyond his own experience he had no accurate information. That there were bitter quarrels he inferred from the sullenness they left behind; but he never witnessed them. Not having witnessed them, he had little or no sense of a strain more serious than usual.
On the next Saturday afternoon he was crouched in the potato field, picking off the ugly reddish bugs and killing them. Suddenly he heard himself called. On rising and looking round he found the runabout car stopped in the road, and Billy Peet, one of the hired men, beckoning him to approach. Brushing his hands against each other, he stepped carefully over the rows of young potatoes, and was soon in the roadway.
"Get in," Billy Peet ordered, briefly. "The boss sent me over to fetch you."
"Sent you over to fetch me—in the machine? What's up?" His eye fell on a small straw suitcase in the back of the car. "What's that for?"
"Get in, and I'll tell you as we go along." Tom clambered in beside the driver. "Mis' Quidmore's sick."
"What's the matter with her?"