“Hadn’t you better change your suit, Alice? To-morrow is Sunday, and if you get it creased there’d be no chance to press it to-night.”
Already Alice had expended considerable nervous energy on the subject of her dress. At one moment, she had felt as if she should don her poorest gown out of consideration for the shabbiness of the stranger. Again, that had seemed a shabby thing to do and she had decided to wear her most attractive things to accord, not with the stranger’s garb but with his manner and bearing. Then she would think of the dusty shop and waver. She might never have any more new clothes and perhaps it was foolish to risk spoiling a really handsome suit for the sake of making a good appearance before a stranger whom she didn’t know whether she liked and whom she would probably never see after to-day.
Then she said that she knew that she liked him. And besides, she had to have excitement after having had that beautiful, romantic image of Dick Cartwright so cruelly shattered before her eyes. She didn’t know how she should bear that if it wasn’t for looking forward to seeing John Converse. And she would see him again after to-day. She would have to—for she meant to help him in his quest. And to-day she was to be as nice as she knew how to be and as interested in helping him plan, and she would also look as well as it was in her power to look, so that altogether it would seem pleasant to him or not boresome to see her again.
She said now to her mother that she would be careful not to muss her skirt, and Mrs. Lorraine did not protest further. But she breathed a sigh of relief as she saw her at the Miller’s gate. She felt that Alice would be all right after an hour with the baby. For though he wasn’t a very attractive baby, he appealed to Mrs. Lorraine. He was quiet, he didn’t cry nor fuss, and he was a baby-creature.
But he wasn’t to have a chance that day. For not long after, the two girls left the house together. Alice had explained that her mother sent her over to help but that she had planned to go to the cottage to get the keys she had left there the day before. Anna declared that the baby was asleep and that there was nothing to do, and begged her to come along and tell her on the way of what had happened during her absence.
“I can’t get a sane, sensible word out of anyone. Braids of yellow hair and orphan babies are the only subjects people will mention to-day,” she added drolly and yet a bit plaintively. “And I’m fed up with the matter of yellow hair, and if I am going to talk about babies, it’s with people that appreciate their fine points better than anyone I have seen thus far.”
As they parted at the lane, Alice begged Anna not to say anything about her having come to the cottage. Anna assented without question and went on to the parsonage.
Alice Lorraine stole softly up the lane. There was no one in sight and no sound. She was earlier than the hour she had named and she went round the house and sat down on the step of the kitchen porch. After a little she stole part way down the overgrown path to the shop and back again. The shop looked as empty as the house,—nay, emptier. The girl was convinced that there was no one there. And her heart grew cold at the thought that four o’clock might come and yet bring no one.
Suppose he shouldn’t come? John Converse had the key not only to the shop but to the house. Suppose he had been—well, the sort of person her mother, for example, might guess him to be upon hearing the story? He wasn’t, but—something might have happened. He might be ill at the hotel at Marsden Bridge or—any number of things might have happened to prevent his coming. And he had the keys! Suppose her mother should want to get into the cottage to-morrow?
The girl rose and ran swiftly but quietly to the shop. Her heart was in her mouth as she knocked softly on the door, so softly that the sound wouldn’t have been heard from the porch she had just left. The door opened and the stranger held it wide for her.