Ma'am Puss curled herself at Alfy's feet and purred herself to sleep so soundly that a tame mouse, the girl's own especial pet, came out from hiding and scampered merrily about the kitchen floor. The chorus of clock-ticks sounded drowsily through the silent house, Madam was taking her daily rest on her lounge in the sitting-room, and after a time the seamstress's good intentions passed into a maze of dreams. In them she seemed to be eternally climbing steep stairs into a chamber of horrors tenanted by one starving boy; or she was watching Madam choke to death over a lump of hot scorched porridge; or she was being tossed on the horns of Squire Pettijohn's black bull,—the terror of all young, and some old, Marsdenites,—and from this last dream she awoke to find the kitchen quite dark, and Whitey mooing outside the window.
It was Montgomery's place to "tend cow," the lonely remnant of a once large herd, but it was Alfaretta's duty to milk it.
"Yes, Whitey! It's all right, an' for once you've come home by yourself. A good job, too. Let me see. How fur have I sewed? To there—to there!" sleepily murmured the maid, and realizing that she had on that afternoon of best intentions accomplished the magnificent distance of two inches! "Two inches, if it's a stitch. Two inches a day for—How many days will it take to hem—to hem—Huh! I can't bother! But if I'm to go to school next quarter as Madam says I may, I'll have to do faster 'n that. Might get it ready for my outfit, like Monty says," remarked the sewer to herself, laughing carelessly.
Folding the garment neatly, she put it back in the work-basket her mistress had given her, and taking her pail, went out to milk old Whitey. But first she attended to what was properly Montgomery's part of the evening's chores, stalling the cow and throwing into her manger the scanty supply of night fodder that could be afforded. Then she sat down to milk, and accomplished that operation so slowly that Whitey turned her head as far as the stanchions would permit to see what this slowness meant.
With the coming of the dusk Alfaretta's perplexities had returned and brought others with them. It was not only a question of the boy's going supperless—nor her courage, nor of burned porridge and Madam's lifted eyebrows when it was tasted, which to the bond-girl was "Worse 'an a lickin';" it was that further one of the grandmother's inquiries. How should she answer them?
She loitered as long as she could, but the evil hour could not be indefinitely postponed. Madam's habits were as exact as those of her ancient clocks, and precisely as the four of them were striking six the little silver bell tinkled in the dining-room.
With an air of every-day indifference, Alfaretta dished the burned porridge upon a delicate china platter and filled a cut-glass pitcher with milk. These she placed upon a silver tray and carried to the shining mahogany table where the mistress was already seated. Then she took her own place behind the lady's chair, as she had been trained, ready to serve the simple meal; yet hardly had she stationed herself there than the dreaded question came:
"Where is Montgomery, Alfaretta?"
"Oh, dear! How not to tell the truth an' how not to lie!" reflected the perplexed girl, but not till the question was repeated did she reply: "I s'pose he's—he's somewheres."
Madam's eyebrows were lifted then. "Why, Alfaretta!"