“I won’t say no, and I will think it over. And we will stay on anyhow until Anna gets rested, and so we may as well get the cow back in the shed and begin making butter,” returned Mrs. Lorraine quietly though not without secret excitement.
At dinner, Alice could not eat and her mother was distressed. Afterwards she persuaded Miss Penny to lie down and then told Alice to go to her room to rest. Not long afterwards the girl appeared in the living-room in her prettiest suit with a jaunty little hat over her dark plaits. Mrs. Lorraine looked up in some surprise.
“You are going out, Alice?”
“Yes, mother, I want—I am going for a walk. I think—I will walk down to the cottage and bring back—some things.”
“But I can’t go with you and I don’t like your going into that empty house alone.”
“O it’s perfectly safe. They say it’s safe everywhere about Farleigh,” murmured Alice uneasily.
“Alice, you must not do it,” declared Mrs. Lorraine with new decision—for it was wise and kind and motherly.
“Very well, I won’t go in,” said Alice in an odd voice.
Her mother looked at her. “You are restless, dear. You are more upset, now, over Anna’s escapade even than Miss Penny at her age. You feel as if you wanted to get away from everything for a little and I don’t blame you. But—we can’t do that any more, dear, you and I. That is what we have always done, though it isn’t your fault. And anyhow we have to make up now. Let me tell you what to do. Miss Penny says Anna feels obliged to go over to the parsonage this afternoon. Suppose you go over to the Millers’ and stay until she comes back? You can help take care of the baby. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“I’ll go right over,” said Alice, and would have started but her mother arrested her.