Of course, if she could have got hold of him afterwards, to have asked him if he had lost a coat and anything else, it would have been different. But Mrs. Smith, who did not know his name, had said that he was leaving the firm for whom he travelled on the next week, and one would want to be very sure indeed before making enquiries.
“Is there anyone else?” asked Eunice, and this time there was undisguised anxiety in her tone.
“Oh no, of course not—it is not possible!” exclaimed Bertha, coming out of her embarrassed reverie, and speaking in a great hurry, yet without any conviction whatever.
Eunice looked pained and disappointed, but said no more, and Bertha made haste to bring the uncomfortable interview to an end. It was certainly dreadful to have to disappoint a good friend such as Eunice had been to her, but not for forty friends could she consent to make that dreadful Mr. Long happy. Not that he had ever ventured to ask her; his plan of action had seemed to consist in paying her the most embarrassing sort of attentions, which rendered him the laughing-stock of the community, and made her simply furious with indignation. If he had asked her straight out to marry him, she would have been able to say, “No, thank you”, and so have ended the miserable business. But it had never entered into Mr. Long’s calculations to do anything so sensible, and so the discomfort for Bertha had gone on.
Somehow the flavour of the trip was spoiled for Bertha now. She was so terribly upset by the change in Eunice, and the fear that the poor thing would slip out of life. But she had to thrust the trouble into the background, and be as merry as she could for the sake of the good folk to whom she was playing an amateur Santa Claus.
It was quite late in the afternoon, the sledge was empty, and she had turned Pucker’s head in the direction of Duck Flats, when she encountered the doctor. She pulled up in a great hurry then to ask him if he had been over to see Grace.
“No, not to-day. Did you want me to see her?” he asked.
“Oh no, there was no need, only, I have been away since the morning, and I did not know if you might have been coming anywhere near us, and so had dropped in,” she answered.
“Duck Flats is not near to anywhere. It is the most out-of-the-way location that any man could ever have fixed upon for his home, I think,” rejoined the doctor testily. “I can’t think how ever you manage to endure life in such a place, Miss Bertha; but, upon my word, you seem to thrive on it, and so do the youngsters. Why, they grow like weeds!”
“I am used to the loneliness now. Of course it is awkward to be so far from civilization sometimes, but if one is very busy it does not matter much in an ordinary way,” said Bertha, and then she asked anxiously, “Is Miss Long very dangerously ill? I was frightened to see her looking so badly.”