“I don’t know Avice, I’m sure. Do be quiet! You fluster around so, you make me nervous.”
“I’m nervous myself, Eleanor. I’m afraid something has happened to uncle. Do you suppose he has had a stroke, or anything?”
“Nonsense, child, of course, not. He has been detained at the office for something.”
“No he hasn’t; I telephoned there and the office is closed.”
“Then he has gone somewhere else.”
“But he said he would be home by five.”
“Well, he isn’t. Now, don’t worry; that can do no good.”
But Avice did worry. She continued to flit about, dividing her attention between the clock and the window.
The girl had been an orphan from childhood, and Rowland Trowbridge had been almost as a father to her. Avice loved him and watched over him as a daughter; at least, that had been the case until lately. A few weeks since, Mr. Trowbridge had succumbed to the rather florid charms of Mrs. Black, his housekeeper, and told Avice he would marry her in a month.
Though greatly surprised and not greatly pleased, Avice had accepted the situation and treated the housekeeper with the same pleasant courtesy she had always shown her. The two “got along” as the phrase is, though their natures were not in many ways congenial.