CHAPTER XVIII
Margaret Kendall did not sleep well the night after the picnic at Silver Lake. She was restless, and she tossed from side to side finding nowhere a position that brought ease of mind and body. She closed her eyes and tried to sleep, but her active brain painted the dark with a panorama of the day’s happenings, and whether her eyes were open or closed, she was forced to see it. There were the lake, the mountain, and the dainty luncheon spread on the grass; and there were the faces of the merry friends who had accompanied her. There were the shifting scenes of the homeward ride, too, with the towers of Hilcrest showing dark and clear-cut against a blood-red sky. But everywhere, from the lake, the mountain, and even from Hilcrest itself, looked out strange wan faces with hollow cheeks and mournful eyes; and everywhere fluttered the ragged skirts of a child’s pink calico dress.
It was two o’clock when Margaret arose, thrust her feet into a pair of bed-slippers and her arms into the sleeves of a long, loose dressing-gown. There was no moon, but a starlit sky could be seen through the open windows, and Margaret easily found her way across the room to the door that led to the balcony.
Margaret’s room, like the dining-room below, looked toward the west and the far-reaching meadows; but from the turn of the balcony where it curved to the left, one might see the town, and it was toward this curve that Margaret walked now. Once there she stopped and stood motionless, her slender hands on the balcony rail.
The night was wonderfully clear. The wide dome of the sky twinkled with a myriad of stars, and seemed to laugh at the town below with its puny little lights blinking up out of the dark where the streets crossed and recrossed. Over by the river where the mills pointed big black fingers at the sky, however, the lights did not blink. They blazed in tier upon tier and line upon line of windows, and they glowed with a never-ending glare that sent a shudder to the watching girl on the balcony.
“And they’re working now—now!” she almost sobbed; then she turned with a little cry and ran down the balcony toward her room where was waiting the cool soft bed with the lavender-scented sheets.
In spite of the restless night she had spent, Margaret arose early the next morning. The house was very quiet when she came down-stairs, and only the subdued rustle of the parlor maid’s skirts broke the silence of the great hall which was also the living-room at Hilcrest.
“Good-morning, Betty.”
“Good-morning, Miss,” courtesied the girl.
Miss Kendall had almost reached the outer hall door when she turned abruptly.