Private Inquiry.
Several weeks passed. Jessie seemed to have received a serious shock from the encounter that had taken place at her father’s house; and for days together she would be depressed, silent, and stand at the window watching, as if in expectation of some one coming. Then an interval of feverish gaiety would set in, during which, with brightened eye, she would chat and play and sing, showing so much excitement that Dick would shake his head to his wife and declare it was a bad sign.
“It’s all fretting, mother,” he would say. “She’s thinking of that scamp Fred.”
Whereupon Mrs Shingle would shake her head in turn, and declare tartly that he knew nothing at all about it, for she was sure it was Tom.
“You are very clever, no doubt, Dick, at keeping secrets and hiding things away from your wife—”
“That’s right,” said Dick. “Go it! I wish I was poor again.”
“But you know no more about that poor girl’s feelings than you do of Chinese.”
“Well, I don’t know much about Chinese, mother, certainly, but I’m sure it ain’t Tom. How can it be?”
“I don’t know how it can be,” said Mrs Shingle tartly, “or how it can’t be; but fretting after Tom Shingle she is, and it’s my belief he’s very fond of her.”
“There you go,” said Dick, who was warming himself, with his back to the fire, waiting for the object of their solicitude to come down to dinner—for she had been lying down the greater part of the day—“there you go, mother, a-showing yourself up and contradicting common-sense. I say it’s after Fred she’s fretting.”