Mrs. Trip sat dozing in her spotless kitchen, with door and window both open. Joey sat on a log on the sunny side of the big shed, snoring peacefully. But Nell, in her little office, worked with feverish haste, sewing as diligently as if her life depended on the number of stitches she could make before supper-time.
Her thoughts were flying even faster than her fingers. Now that she had leisure to think and to plan she was settling many things, and one of them was that first and foremost came the necessity of at once returning to Mr. Bronson, or Brunsen, the case containing the thirty dollars and the portrait of the sweet-faced elderly lady, which she had found under the settle at the Lone House when she cleared up after the departure of the stranger.
But she did not wish him to know that she was in his immediate neighbourhood. He might recognize her if he came to the depot, but even this was doubtful, because she was altered so much in every way.
While she was meditating on how she could get the money to him without his getting any clue to her whereabouts, the sounder began its call, and was followed by the signal, “Gertrude talks.”
A smile quivered over Nell’s troubled face. Every day, when business was not pressing, they talked to each other over the wires; but this was the first time to-day that she had received a word from her friend.
“Mrs. Nichols wants you to come down Saturday night until Monday. Will you?”
Nell thought hard for a minute. Should she go? It would be delightful to see all her friends at Bratley. It would also be delightful to be away from Camp’s Gulch for a Sunday just now, when she so heartily desired to avoid any encounter with Mr. Brunsen. But the difficulty lay in the fact that she could not be back at Camp’s Gulch on Monday morning until twenty minutes after her day of work was supposed to begin, and twenty minutes to a telegraph operator sometimes makes a very great difference indeed.
Other clerks at the depot had gone away and risked being found out, Joey had told her; but this absence-without-leave idea did not commend itself to Nell, so, after considerable misgiving, she wired to Lytton to know if she might be away from her post for that first twenty minutes on Monday morning.
The answer came back, after some little delay, and was very satisfactory, in spite of its curt-brevity.
“Yes; once in every month.”