"I am much better away," she wrote, "where I shall not be in the throes of the revolution which has overtaken my household. With Jane refusing many of her most important invitations, Forrest away, and Shirley casting herself into the business world, like any poor man's daughter, I should be too distressed to be able to play my own part with composure. I hear that Jane is not keeping up her calling list as conscientiously as she should do. Please try to impress her with her duty to our friends, even if she does not care to make them hers. When I return, I shall wish to take up my social life where I left it, and if I should find my friends alienated by the eccentricity of my daughter-in-law, I should feel that a wrong had been done which it would be difficult to overlook."
"About the hardest thing in the world," thought Murray, as he pondered these lines, "seems to be for one woman to get another's point of view. Here 's Jane, staying at home all summer to keep me company, when she might have gone off to the seaside or the mountains with Olive. She 's tackling big problems every day in the management of the house, to say nothing of looking after all mother's social correspondence. She 's entertained relatives of ours from in town and from out of town, to say nothing of making father's evenings pleasant and seeing to her own family. Yet because some woman on mother's list writes her that Jane has failed to pay a call within the required limit of time, the poor girl is 'eccentric.' Well, she shall not be taxed with it, if I can help it."
Feeling that Jane, although unconscious of the elder woman's dissatisfaction with her endeavours, should have amends made her after some fashion, Murray arranged to take her with him upon a week's business trip, a flying journey half-way across the continent and back. In the absence of Mrs. Townsend and Olive, this left Shirley and her father quite alone for a week.
One of the evenings of that week Mr. Townsend spent with Joseph Bell--as was now his frequent custom. On this evening Shirley settled down with a book before the library fire. She had been working harder and harder to perfect herself for the position which she had been assured should be hers upon the resignation of Miss Henley, a fortnight hence. And she had at last arrived at that state of confidence in her own powers which permitted an occasional indulgence in an idle evening without a twinge of conscience.
The book proved so entertaining that an hour passed, during which she took no note of time. She could not have told whether it was late or early, when a slight stir in the hall brought her attention to the fact that somebody was there, awaiting her recognition. She looked up to see Peter Bell standing in the doorway, his face so grave and worn that she gave a little cry of amazement.
"Why, Peter!" she said, and came forward to give him her hand. He looked down at her almost as if he did not see her. His hand was cold.
"You 've been out in the wet--you 're chilled," she said, eagerly drawing him toward the fire. "Why, you 're very wet! You did n't have an umbrella."
"I believe I did n't," Peter answered, glancing at his coat-sleeve, which was, indeed, almost dripping with dampness. "I 've been walking a long way--I don't know how far."
He took the big armchair which she offered him, but she stood regarding his moist condition with concern. His visits were too few to make her willing to run the risk of losing this one by suggesting that he ought not to sit down in his wet coat; and after a moment she ran away and came back with a house coat of Murray's.
"Please put this on," she said.