“Not another syllable, if I sat here for two years!”
The possibility of such an infliction seemed so terrible to poor Polly that she actually shuddered as she heard it.
“Is n't that your mother I see sitting up there, with all the fine ribbons in her cap?” whispered M'Cormick, as he pointed to a small room which opened off an angle of the larger one. “That 's 'the boodoo,' is n't it?” said he, with a grin. This, I must inform my reader, was the M'Cormick for “boudoir.” “Well, I'll go and pay my respects to her.”
So little interest did Mrs. Dill take in the stir and movement around her that the Major utterly failed in his endeavors to torture her by all his covert allusions and ingeniously drawn inferences. No matter what hints he dropped or doubts he suggested, she knew “Clarissa” would come well out of her trials; and beyond a little unmeaning simper, and a muttered “To be sure,” “No doubt of it,” and, “Why not?” M'Cormick could obtain nothing from her.
Meanwhile, in the outer room the doctor continued to stride up and down with impatience, while Polly sat quietly working on, not the less anxious, perhaps, though her peaceful air betokened a mind at rest.
“That must be a boat, papa,” said she, without lifting her head, “that has just come up to the landing-place. I heard the plash of the oars, and now all is still again.”
“You 're right; so it is!” cried he, as he stopped before the window. “But how is this! That 's a lady I see yonder, and a gentleman along with her. That's not Stapylton, surely!”
“He is scarcely so tall,” said she, rising to look out, “but not very unlike him. But the lady, papa,—the lady is Miss Barrington.”
Bad as M'Cormick's visit was, it was nothing to the possibility of such an advent as this, and Dill's expressions of anger were now neither measured nor muttered.
“This is to be a day of disasters. I see it well, and no help for it,” exclaimed he, passionately. “If there was one human being I 'd hate to come here this morning, it's that old woman! She's never civil. She's not commonly decent in her manner towards me in her own house, and what she 'll be in mine, is clean beyond me to guess. That's herself! There she goes! Look at her remarking,—I see, she's remarking on the weeds over the beds, and the smashed paling. She's laughing too! Oh, to be sure, it's fine laughing at people that's poor; and she might know something of that same herself. I know who the man is now. That 's the Colonel, who came to the 'Fisherman's Home' on the night of the accident.”