CHAPTER XXIII
Something of a Mistake
“Oh, Grace, he has gone, really gone; now I shall be able to breathe freely again!” cried Bertha, skipping into the kitchen again after she had seen the sledge with the police and Edgar Bradgate disappear across the snow and vanish into the mist, which was beginning to obstruct the clear brilliance of the winter morning.
“Poor child, it has been bad for you,” said Grace, “and yet, do you know, as the poor man sat in the rocking chair, I kept thinking what a nice strong face he had, and it was intellectual and good also. I should think that he was a man well worth knowing.”
“Humph! Anyhow, I am thankful indeed to be spared his closer acquaintance,” retorted Bertha, as she cleared away the breakfast which she had prepared so hastily for the police, and she was bustling to and fro, intent on getting the day’s work through as quickly and as easily as she could make it go, when she heard a jingle of sledge bells, and a minute later up dashed a sledge drawn by two horses and driven by Bill Humphries, while Mr. Semple, the father of Dan, sat by his side, and appeared to fairly bristle with rage.
Bertha went out to meet them with a smile, and expected that Mr. Semple was at least going to be very grateful to her for having driven the sledge of goods over so early in the day; but, to her surprise, instead of the thanks she expected, and felt that she had honestly earned, Semple senior asked in a loud and angry tone:
“Where is that fellow who brought the sledge here?”
“Inspector Grant came over from Rownton, and finding how ill the poor man seemed, took him back to the barracks at Rownton, because he said that they could nurse him more easily than I could,” said Bertha, and because she was offended at the lack of proper gratitude in Mr. Semple’s manner, her tone was more cold and distant than her wont.
“I am downright disappointed to hear it,” snorted the irate storekeeper, who seemed to be in a great state of indignation, “for I had promised myself the pleasure of punching the fellow’s head and then rolling him in the snow, and if I could have added to that the chance of keeping him tied up in my barn for two or three days on short commons, I think that I should have been really happy, in spite of having had to go so short of food myself the last few days.”
“The man could not help being unable to deliver the goods last night,” Bertha reminded him, with considerable dignity in her tone. “He was quite unconscious from the cold when the horses reached here, and at first I thought that he was dead, as indeed he would have been but for the accident of his slipping down under the robes of the sledge, which luckily were most beautifully thick.”
“Do you know what was in that sledge?” demanded the storekeeper, in a tone of extreme exasperation.