Two hours later Katharine and Montgomery sat down in the kitchen to a dinner of bread and milk, while over the rest of the house hung a strange silence which made even its former quietude seem noisy by contrast. Aunt Eunice had gone to lie down, being greatly shaken by the sad accident, which, while being much less tragic than the death Katharine had reported, was trouble sufficiently serious. In the kitchen chamber above, Moses' own room, they could hear Susanna softly stepping about in list slippers, only the jar of the floor beams betraying her movements, and occasionally a muffled voice, strangely unlike the gruff tones of the hired man, would float down to them. Sir Philip lay purring himself to sleep, after a strenuous season of unrest, during which nobody had had time to protect him from mischievous Punch. As for the latter, he had been fatigued by his trip to and from the forest, as well as his man[oe]uvres with the Angora, and now took his own rest by sleeping with one eye open.
The children themselves were weary. Katharine from the excitement of the morning, and Montgomery from physical exercise. He had never done so many useful things in his life as he had crowded into the space of two short hours. It was he who had summoned the doctor, run back and forth between that gentleman's office and Miss Maitland's house, carried a plain statement of facts to Madam Sturtevant, as well as a highly furbished one to every householder between the two mansions, and had manfully attended to Mr. Jones's noon "chores." He had, indeed, already a wild ambition to be engaged in the hired man's place, since the doctor said that that sufferer would be laid up in bed for at least three months.
"I'd r-r-rather do chores any day than go to s-s-school," he announced to his companion, swallowing a large bit of bread at the same time, and thereby causing that young person to tilt her nose upwards, disdainfully.
"You ought to be as nice in your manners out here alone with me as you would be in the real dining-room with Aunt Eunice and grown-up company," she reproved, daintily balancing her own spoon with an ease which the other would scarcely admit to himself that he admired.
"F-f-fudge. You ain't c-c-com—pany no more. You belong, don't you?"
"I—I guess so. I begin to hope so, for this is the most delightfully happening place I ever was in. Though I never was in, to stay, but one other. First you fell over a precipice, and then I found a nest of little turkeys all dead, out in the black currant-bushes, Susanna says they are, that had stolen themselves—whatever that is. Then that mystery of a brass bound box; and now Uncle Moses breaking his bones, and so much going on. But—Montgomery Sturtevant! That box! What did become of it? Would we dare, do you suppose we might go back to the woods and find it? It was all your fault. If I hadn't let you carry it—All this about poor Uncle Moses has put it out of my mind, but now it comes back and it's more important than he is. I'm sure of it. We must find it. Come, quick!"
Katharine pushed back from the table and; sprang to her feet, her weariness forgotten in this fresh anxiety.
But Monty was neither anxious nor excited; at least, not about the box, though he held it scarcely less important than she did. He was busy over a "sum" in mental arithmetic, a branch of study he little favored, though it had now come to assume considerable importance to him. Yet the problem was beyond his capacity, though this keen-witted girl might solve it. He'd try her. Therefore, still gurgling his milk, he spluttered:
"S-s-s-ay, Katy! if a man, if a m-m-man can earn a dollar a day doin' c-c-chores, all the c-c-chores, how much can a boy earn doin' h-h-ha-half of 'em?"
"Not a single cent, if I had to pay him, and he were such a boy as you. A boy so mean he'd take a brass bound box out of a girl's hands and lose it for her, and then wouldn't budge to go get it. You do try me so, Montgomery! And there's one thing I know. That is, that if I had the management of you I'd break you of that detestable habit of stuttering, or know the reason why. It's all nonsense. You can talk as well as anybody else, only you're too lazy. Now, will you come?"