“But you surely must know something about him; and I want to write to him,” said Bertha impatiently, and then she was surprised to see a flicker of fear in the old woman’s blear eyes.
“Well, I guess that the writing will have to wait a bit. Perhaps he will happen along this way again some day, and then you can say what you want to—a much better fashion than putting things in black and white, so that they can be sweared to in a court of justice,” said Mrs. Saunders, with a toss of her head, and not another bit of information could Bertha get out of her.
“I shall have to ask the girls what I had better do,” she said to herself, as she went slowly back to her home to start on her belated morning’s work.
Even that short walk had tired her so much, that it needed the entire stock of her lately acquired resolution to keep from sitting down and letting things go anyhow. But by a great effort she stuck to her task, and was all ready for Anne, who came rushing home about a quarter past twelve, snatched a hasty meal, and rushed back again, uneasy all the time lest her turbulent charges should get up to serious mischief in her absence.
Then Bertha was left with the long afternoon before her, for Hilda could not be home much before six o’clock. However, there was the house to put tidy, and the work she could not accomplish in the morning was cleared out of the way in the afternoon, and she found herself with an hour of rest before the girls came home.
She was tremendously proud of the tidy rooms, and she kept walking backwards and forwards admiring her handiwork, until some undarned stockings poking from an over-full drawer in Hilda’s room suggested a fresh outlet for her new-found energy, and taking them out to the kitchen, she sat down by the stove and began to darn them. It was the work that she hated most of all, so the voluntary doing of it was the most real self-sacrifice that she could have shown. However, Hilda had been forced to do all sorts of things for her when she was ill, and so it was up to her to make what amends were in her power. Anne was in, and supper was ready, when Hilda came back from Paston, rushing into the house like a whirlwind, and shouting in great excitement—
“Girls! girls! I have got some of the most wonderful news for you. What do you think is going to happen?”
“How should we know?” cried Anne, standing erect and staring at Hilda in amazement; for the second sister usually hugged her dignity too closely for exhibitions like these.
“I am going to Europe!” cried Hilda, stopping in the middle of the floor, and dropping the words out one by one with tremendous emphasis and solemnity.
“You are going to Europe—when?” cried Anne, who was the first to recover the power of speech, while Bertha caught at a chair to steady herself, because the room would keep swinging round at such a rate.