But she was now far wider awake than the pinch on her ear had made her, and she was terribly disturbed. In that house everybody, meaning Madam and herself, did what its young "master" desired. Of course on the lady's part there were some exceptions to this rule, but none whatever on Alfaretta's. The lad was at once her delight and her torment; in his wilder moods teasing her relentlessly, but in his more thoughtful ones pitying her for her hard lot in life. Yet, in fact, since the girl had been taken from the "county farm" to serve Madam Sturtevant until she should be eighteen, she was scarcely poorer than the mistress who employed her, and who scrupulously shared her own comforts with her charge.
Big as the house was, there was very little money in it. None whatever would have been there save for the generosity of distant relatives who regularly sent a small cheque to the Madam, as well as a box of clothing for the grandson; nor did they even dream that upon that cheque and the neighborly kindness of Eunice Maitland the household at the mansion existed.
Fortunately, for the present, Alfaretta demanded nothing in the matter of wages. When she should be eighteen the, to her, almost fabulous sum of one hundred dollars would be her due as well as a decent "fitting out" of wearing apparel. Then she would be free to go or stay, work for "real wages" for this mistress, or engage herself to another. But eighteen was a long way off as yet, and though sometimes a wonder as to where she should get the pledged one hundred dollars did cross Madam Sturtevant's mind, she put the thought aside as soon as possible. Sufficient unto that day would be its own evil, and there had been days in the past far more evil than Alfy's coming of age could ever be.
Had relic-hunters known it the Mansion was a storehouse of genuine "antiques" which would have been eagerly purchased at fancy prices; but Marsden was far out of the line of such persons, and, save in extreme necessity, the old gentlewoman would have refused to part with her belongings.
Eunice, who was better informed on such matters because of her wider reading, had once delicately suggested to her friend that such or such an old "claw-foot" was worth a deal of money, and that it wasn't really necessary to have four tall clocks, each more than a century old, ticking the hours away in that empty house.
But her suggestion was wholly misunderstood. Madam had rather crisply replied that she was perfectly capable of winding the clocks on the one day in eight when they required it, and hoped to continue so till her life's end. Indeed, it had used to be a rather formal little household ceremony—that winding of the clocks on every Sunday morning. A ceremony that had always been performed by the two reigning heads of the "family" in each succeeding generation. It had been Madam's place to walk with her husband from room to room and stand beside him while with the queer old keys he wound the weights up from the bottom of the upright cases to the top, whence they would again begin their slow descent to the bottom, reaching it as another Lord's Day came around.
Nowadays, Montgomery, as the last of his race, had been promoted to accompany his grandmother on this clock-winding tour, and had once innocently asked:
"Did my father use to go with y-you, as I-I-I do?"
Strangely enough, he had never before inquired much about his parents, but had somehow imbibed the knowledge that both were dead. His father had once "gone away" and never returned; but his mother had come home, bringing him an infant, had placed him in the Madam's arms, had taken to her bed, and had left it only to be carried to the burying-ground on the hill. Of her the old lady often talked, and once when they had carried roses to the unmarked grave he had heard her softly quote: "A sweeter woman ne'er drew breath, than my son's wife, Elizabeth."
But of that son, her own only child, she said nothing till he asked that unfortunate question. Then she had turned upon him with a face so unlike her own that he was frightened and needed no command to make him avoid that subject forever after.