Bram with all his humility, was proud in his own way, and exceedingly jealous. If Claire had loved her cousin passionately, and had been jilted by him, as Bram had believed to be the case, he did not feel that he should even have wished to take the vacant place in her heart. No doubt the wish would have come in time, but not at once. If, however, it were true that she had not cared for Chris in the only way of which Bram would have been jealous, why, then, indeed, there was hope of the most brilliant kind.
Bram, on his way to the farm, began to see in his heart such visions as love only can build and paint, love, too, that has not taken the edge off itself, frittered itself away, on the innumerable flirtations with which his daily companions at the office beguiled the dead monotony of existence.
In his new life, as in his old, it was Bram’s lot to be “chaffed” daily on his unimpressionability, on the stolid, matter-of-fact way in which he went about his daily work, “as if,” as the other clerks said, “his eyes could see nothing better in the world than paper and ink, print and figures.”
Bram on these occasions was accustomed to put on an air of extra stolidity, and to shake his head, and declare that he had no time to think of anything but his work. And all the time he wondered to himself at the ease with which they could chatter of their affection for this girl and that, and enjoy the jokes which were levelled at them, and wear their heart upon their sleeve with ill-concealed delight.
And he smiled to himself at their mistake, and went on nourishing his heart with its own chosen food in secret, with raptures that nobody guessed.
And now the thought that his dreamy hopes might grow into realities brought the color to his pale cheeks and new lustre to his steady gray eyes, as he walked soberly down the hill, and entered the farmyard in the yellow sunlight of the end of a fine day in September.
He knocked at the kitchen door, and nobody answered. He knocked more loudly, fancying that he heard voices inside the house. But again without result. So he opened the door, and peeped in. A small fire was burning in the big grate, but there was nobody in the room. With the door open, however, the voices he had faintly heard became louder, and he became aware that an altercation was going on between Claire and her father in the front part of the house.
He was on the point of retiring, therefore, with a sigh for the poor little girl, when a cry, uttered by her in a wailing tone, reached his ears, and acted upon his startled senses like flaming pitch on tow.
“Oh, papa, don’t, don’t hurt me!”
The next moment Bram had burst the opposite door open, and saw Theodore, his little, mean face wrinkled up with malice, strike Claire’s face sharply with his open hand. This was in the hall, outside the dining-room door.