CHAPTER XI. SUSPENSE.
“It doesn't somehow seem natural,” said Mr. Crump, as he took his seat at the tea-table, “to sit down without Ida. It seems as if half of the family were gone.”
“Just what I've said twenty times to-day,” remarked his wife. “Nobody knows how much a child is to them till they lose it.”
“Not lose it, mother,” said Jack, who had been sitting in a silence unusual for him.
“I didn't mean to say that,” said Mrs. Crump. “I meant till they were gone away for a time.”
“When you spoke of losing,” said Jack, “it made me feel just as Ida wasn't coming back.”
“I don't know how it is,” said his mother, thoughtfully, “but that's just the feeling I've had several times to-day. I've felt just as if something or other would happen so that Ida wouldn't come back.”
“That is only because she has never been away before,” said the cooper, cheerfully. “It isn't best to borrow trouble; we shall have enough of it without.”
“You never said a truer word, brother,” said Rachel, lugubriously. “'Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward.' This world is a vale of tears. Folks may try and try to be happy, but that isn't what they're sent here for.”