“My uncle is away,” she said, confusedly, after we were seated in a room opening off from the hall where I had entered, “but we expect him home to-night. My mother is not well, and demands a great deal of care, or I should have come down to the gate to meet you when you drove up.”
She was so ill at ease that I hurried to explain my errand, and I thought she was greatly relieved to know I had not come on a visit.
“I shall be ready in the morning at any time you are,” she said; and I wondered she could leave her mother, for I had been fearing that perhaps I should have to go back without her.
There was a great romp and noise in the room above the one in which we sat, and she looked out through the door leading into the hall as if half expecting to see somebody come tumbling down the stairs.
“My uncle’s children,” she said, seeing I wondered at the noise. “He has eight.”
I wondered she had not told of them before, and then I remembered that she seldom talked of her uncle’s family or of her mother.
“How are they all?” I inquired, thinking I must say something.
There was a great crash in the room overhead and a cry of pain, and Agnes went quickly to the door to listen. Being convinced that one of them had fallen over a chair, she came back, and replied to my question.
“Very noisy,” she said, half laughingly. “I fear they will annoy you; it is so quiet at your house, and there is so much confusion here.”
I said, “Oh! not at all,” not knowing what other reply to make.