“To-morrow’s Sunday and there’ll be nothing to do. He’ll have to take me then. He was tired and upset by that horrid talk last night. Oh, why do I have to be mixed up with things I can’t help—and—and have him cross, and everything?” She ended with a little shuddering cry, and buried her head in the kitchen towel and gave up to the tears which, now that she was alone, she could candidly shed. How she longed for Aunt Susan, and yet she could not have talked to her of these things; but in spite of that she wanted her.
“Will you go over to—to Mrs. Hornby’s with us to-day?” she asked Mrs. Hunter at the breakfast table the next morning.
“Why—yes—if you’re going,” Mrs. Hunter answered with a hesitant glance at John.
The tone and the hesitancy struck Elizabeth. She looked at John as she had seen the older woman do.
“Mother spoke yesterday of your going,” John said quickly, “and I said—well, I want to get some more cleaning done about that barn before the man comes. There’s plenty of time about that. Let them come here if they want to see us.”
“But I want to go,” Elizabeth persisted. She had been accustomed to dictating where John Hunter should take her. John himself had taught her to do so.
“Well, there’s plenty of time. I’m busy to-day, if it is Sunday,” was all that her husband thought it necessary to reply.
The hope that Aunt Susan would come to see her if she found that they were not coming over helped Elizabeth to accept the brusque refusal better than she otherwise would have done. John was cheerful and pleasant, and the hurt that she had felt at first died away. He asked her to go to the barn with him and was merry and full of small talk and chatter, such as lovers appreciate, and the girl finally concluded that that must be his naturally decided manner when suddenly approached on a subject to which he could not consent. Elizabeth was aware that there was little consideration shown her at such times, but was resolved not to find fault unless the question were a vital one. Altogether it was a happy day. Gratitude was a large feature of Elizabeth’s make-up, and there was something about being in the atmosphere of refinement and beauty which made her accept many little evidences of inattentiveness on the part of her husband. As she helped with the cooking, she was conscious of the difference between the kitchen utensils of this and her own home; as she swept she contrasted the red-and-green ingrain carpet of the sitting room with the worn and ugly rag carpet of her mother’s house; as she set the table she reflected that no other house of that community boasted a dining room, and certainly no other young wife could say she had napkins and a white tablecloth every day in the week; and there was yet a larger item than these for which the girl was thankful: no girl she had ever known had married so cultured a man. Elizabeth looked across the table as she served the pie at dinner and in spite of every snub was humbly thankful to be a part of that family. Nor was she a mere snob and deserving of what she got in the way of ill treatment because she submitted to it; Elizabeth was a young girl of artistic temperament, craving beauty, and longing for the companionship of those who talked in terms comprehensible to her at the same time that they advanced her æsthetic education and possibilities. In proportion as she valued this thing was she to pay her price.
The price Elizabeth was to pay came at strange and unexpected moments. The hired man, when he appeared, proved to be Jake Ransom, now a man, and ready to do a man’s work in his simple station. Jake of course knew for whom he was to work and came into the kitchen to his first meal with his face wreathed in a sheepish grin.