"Leah, I wish you'd ask Miss Fielding if Nokomis can't come up into my room this morning, will you?"
She hesitated just long enough for me to notice that she was troubled; then she put down the tray, saying:
"Nokomis is a queer old dog, Mr. Castle, and I don't know that she'll come."
"Why, she was here all day yesterday and we had a beautiful time together!"
"I know." Leah turned to leave. "I'll speak about it, of course, but—well, these dogs have all sorts of fancies, and you can't always depend upon them. They will and they won't." She did not look at me as she answered, and went out immediately.
I felt that I had somehow blundered into an indiscretion, though what it was I couldn't possibly see. It made me exceedingly uncomfortable, for I would have done anything rather than take advantage of the kindness and hospitality with which I had been treated. I remembered that I had not yet heard the dogs barking; that might possibly mean something, but it gave me no clue. I had to give it up and try to make amends as well as I might.
A little later I heard Miss Fielding's door slam, and her footsteps running down the stairs. That she had not come in to see me, even if for only a few words, did not decrease my annoyance. Shortly after came a chorus of barks, but I fancied that they were not of the same mood that I had noted before; there seemed to be something antagonistic in their protesting notes, as if some stranger had perhaps passed the house. I had got the idea that Midmeadows was a lonely place, though I had not yet seen the outside of the building, and no doubt the collies were distrustful of visitors. I waited expectantly to hear Miss Fielding call them, one by one, as she had before; but, if she did so, I missed it.
For half an hour or more there was a steady pounding down-stairs, and, when Leah came for my tray, I heard some one whistling, the least bit out of tune. Leah was silent and reserved. She asked how I had slept, and if I were better, and there the conversation ended.
Finally, at about eleven o'clock, Miss Fielding came in. I looked up eagerly.
She wore a stiffly laundered shirt-waist, noticeably stained and soiled, though it had evidently been put on clean that morning. She wore no stock, and the neck was turned away in a V, carelessly, showing a little gold chain with a sapphire pendant, and the sleeves were rolled up above her dimpled elbows. She had a heavy walking-skirt and heavy mannish shoes whose soles projected a full half-inch beyond the uppers. Her hair, which, before, I had always seen exquisitely coiled high on her head, was done in a full pompadour, though now it fell in flat folds over her forehead and wisped out in the back of her neck.