THE SUBSTANCE OF A DREAM
Scarcely even for a passing glance did Elizabeth pause at the front door of the cottage although it stood open, as Miss Miranda had left it, with the lamp still burning cheerfully on her sewing table inside. Weary and breathless, she stumbled along the path, turned the corner of the house, and saw the brightly lighted workshop with its door also standing open to the warmth of the night. It was as she thought, the stranger was here, sitting on the high stool beside the table, talking volubly, thrusting forward his long-chinned, dark face and pounding on his knee to give emphasis to what he said. Mr. Reynolds sat opposite in the one arm chair the place afforded, looking white and frail and old in contrast to his visitor, very quiet, and listening with earnest attention. Like an image of carved ebony, Dick sat immovable on one of the posts of the back of the chair. The green-shaded light, with its brilliant, narrow circle of illumination, showed nothing else clearly, but gave only faint vision of wheels and pulleys, of shining glints that sparkled back from polished steel or ruddy copper, while through the whole room droned the slow song of turning wheels.
There was a step on the flagstones behind Elizabeth just before she mounted the doorstep. As she had hoped, David had followed her. Both men glanced up as the boy and girl entered, but there was no pause in the talk, since any new presence seemed to make no impression on the tenseness of the scene. Even Dick scarcely turned his head as he sat like some brooding spirit above his master.
“Can’t you stop those infernal wheels?” Donald Reynolds said, as they came in. “I cannot hear my own voice with them grinding away in my ears.”
“David!” said the older man in tone of request.
With quick obedience, David stepped to the end of the room, pulled a lever, jerked a protesting, crackling switch and brought the whirring song to an end. Without the familiar sound the place seemed uncannily silent as Donald went on talking. To the presence of David and Betsey he gave no heed, having apparently but one thought, to speak the words he had come to say before Miss Miranda should return.
“So I made up my mind that you should be told what a great wrong you are doing Miranda,” he resumed. “For ten years you have spent time and money on this worthless piece of work, pottering and tinkering and pretending that you really hoped to accomplish something in the end.”
“But I have accomplished something,” returned the old man gravely. “I am very near to success now and ten years is not long when you remember that I lost all my records and all my models when the house was burned. No, ten years has not been too much to spend.”
“It is not time alone that you have spent, but money, spent it like water when it should have been making Miranda comfortable. Have you stopped, ever, to think of how she works and saves and pinches, how she toils in that garden and fattens miserable fowls for the market so that you can go on with this game of yours?”
“Miranda chose to have it so,” Mr. Reynolds returned quietly, but the two onlookers could see him wince.