He said over and over again that she wouldn’t be far, just as Kit had repeated his speech about the flag. They were like helpless, stranded actors dropping cues that there was nobody left in the theatre to pick up. Then Thomas bellowed again in the midst of a last excuse, and they heard a door fling open above them and afterwards slam. There was a running and flutter and clatter on the stair, and Agnes came flying past him into the room.
She went straight across to the guest and took his hand, her face warm with welcoming smiles, and her voice full of self-reproach. “Eh, now, to think I missed you after all!” she said; “an’ me that set on being on the spot! I never thought you’d catch me unbeknownst. I was nobbut giving a look to things upstairs.... Ay, well, you’re welcome, I’m sure ... you are that. We’re right glad, Thomas and me, to have you come....”
She still had hold of the hand which he left limply in her clasp, and he looked at her smiling face and said “Thank you,” and smiled too. The kindliness of her welcome warmed his heart, though it was not the welcome he wanted from the house. It was like the welcome from the cottages in the row, which was pleasant and comforting but had nothing to do with home. Agnes was mistress of the place, but she was a stranger, too, and no stranger could give you the real feeling of home. She had never been in the house when he went in his dream, and now that she spoke in the dream it was bound to seem strange. But she was pleasant to look at, and homely, and very kind, and she would grow to be part of the real things after a while. So when she continued to smile he smiled again, and Thomas smiled joyfully over by the stair. Perhaps there was just a touch of self-satisfaction in the smile, because he was thinking of Marget’s welcome home. Anyhow, they had done the old man better than that, even if Agnes had been off the spot! He forgot, as he watched, that he had been afraid, that things had seemed to be going utterly wrong. He only remembered that they were perfect now—the house, the weather, and the kindly wife. Certainly, it would be queer if his father wasn’t content ... but then he was positive he would be content....
Agnes was sure of it, at least, sure as triumphant angels gathering tired souls into heaven. Now she was laughing and repeating her first speech—it was curious how they repeated themselves to-night. Then she flew to the hearth and set the kettle back to boil, afterwards swinging round to put the visitor into his chair.
“Set you down, Father, and I’ll make the tea. You’ll be wanting your tea, I reckon, after yon drive. Now, then, Thomas, shove it nearer the fire, and don’t stand poping like a pig at a punch! There you be, Father ... champion ... now you’ll do. Shall I put fiddle down for you, by the way?”
He looked at her as she stood in front of him, holding out her hand, and a look of anxious terror crossed his face. It was true that she looked like the lasses who had loved the fiddle in the past, but that was before he had learned to be afraid. Still, this was home, and to refuse was to be false to the dream from the very first, because home was a place where every man’s foolishness was safe. “You’ll mind what you’re at?” he pleaded, searching her with his eyes, and she nodded her head wisely, and for the first time did not smile. Taking it gently, she set it on a table near, and there was no tremor of nervousness from the strings. She nodded again as she turned away, as though the fiddle was a secret that they shared....
“I’m feared to let it out o’ my sight,” Kit explained in an apologetic tone. “Marget was that set on shoving it in the fire.”
“Ay, well, it’ll be safe enough here,” Agnes said. “It’ll be safe as the Bible and precious as bright gold.” She went to a brass-handled drawer and whipped out a snowy square of a cloth which she laid across the strings. “Thomas mun make you a box for it,” she went on; “a nice warm box as’ll keep it out o’ the damp.”
Thomas said he would start on it first thing, in a tone that meant he was glad of something to say. Of course he was quite sure now, as Agnes was sure, but as yet he could not copy her conversational ease. “A grand warm box’ll be just the ticket,” he said. “It’ll be better and snugger a deal when it’s gitten a box.”
Kit said they were right kind, and settled himself in his chair, staring in front of him at the shining hearth. He did not like to say that he would not have the box, and that he hated to see the fiddle covered up. The white cloth looked for all the world like a little shroud, and the box would be only a coffin in his eyes. He did not mean to have the box whatever they said, but it wouldn’t be manners to tell them so right off. There seemed no letting him and his fiddle alone, though all that folks could do for him was to let him alone. It was just the way Thomas had bothered him in the field, showing him things he didn’t want to see. Well, he would slip away from them later on, but now he must mind his manners and let be.