Seth left John to his bad temper and language, and returned to the farm in the afternoon. A telegram from Albert awaited him.
“New York, Oct. 19.—If possible conclude business, home to-night, at latest to-morrow morning. Wait for me at all hazards.—Albert.”
To provide against a possible delay over Tuesday, Seth devoted the afternoon, and the earlier part of the evening, to writing matter for his paper, which Dana was to convey to Thessaly for the early morning train, when he went to the cheese-factory. If Albert was coming at all that night, he would arrive about eight.
Nine o’clock came. Aunt Sabrina, after sitting in stem silence by the living-room stove for an hour or two, looking at the wall-paper as her brother Lemuel had been won’t to do, went up to bed with a frigid “good night.” The farm people had all retired with the chickens, long before.
Scarcely raising his eyes from his writing, Seth remarked:
“How Aunt Sabrina has failed since I left the farm! She grows ever so much like father. Poor old woman, she was so eager to have Albert come here, so elated with the idea that the family was to be restored to social and political dignity again—and now the apples seem to be all dead-sea fruit to her. I can’t see that she takes the slightest interest in Albert’s campaign. Odd, isn’t it?”
Isabel was sitting near the stove, around the corner of the table from him. The reddish radiance reflected down from the shaded lamp fell upon her rounded chin and her smooth white neck, dainty in tint as the ruffle in which it lost itself. Above this lace at the back, as she bent over her embroidery, some stray curling wisps of hair gleamed like gold in the light. She replied:
“It isn’t that at all. She’s interested enough in the Congress idea, or would be if she hadn’t something else on her mind. The prying old piece found out, by quizzing Dana, about our writing to each other. She has got it into her ridiculous old head, I feel sure, that there is something between us. Didn’t you notice the way she eyed us at the dinner table yesterday?”
Seth did not answer. His article was unfinished, but he suddenly found himself in doubt whether it was not already long enough. He reflected, or tried to reflect, for a moment, while the soft tones of her voice murmured in his ears, then added a sentence which might serve as a conclusion, and scrawled a dash underneath.
“There! I’m through!” he said, and looked up.