As she drove off, Mary Cary waved to her, then turned and stood a moment in the wide, cool hall, looking first in the library on the right, the dining-room on the left, at the broad, winding staircase in front, and through the open door at the end to the orchard, which in the distance could be glimpsed, and her hands clasped as if to press closely the happiness that filled her.
It was hers, all hers. The dream of her starved little heart, when, as a child, she had lived in the Yorkburg Orphan Asylum, had come true. She had a home of her own.
"And I didn't have to take a husband to get it," she said, nodding her head. "That's such a satisfaction."
She dropped in the big chintz-covered chair and, with elbows on its arms and finger-tips pressed to cheeks, surveyed critically the size and shape and furnishings of the rooms, then sighed in happy content.
"It's such a pity so many people still think a home /must/ have a man in it. If a man belongs to you and is nice he might make the home nicer, but"—she shook her head—"Mrs. McDougal says there are times when a husband is a great trial. I haven't any brothers or a father, and I don't want to risk a trial yet. The reason most homes need men is because men mean money, I suppose. You can't sneeze without needing money. And yet"—she looked around—"everything in this house didn't cost as much as the rug Mrs. Maxwell has on her drawing-room floor. I don't wonder John loathes his house. You can't really see the price-tags on the things in it, but you're certain you could find them if you had the chance to look. I wonder where John's letter is?" She got up and went into the library, turned over papers and magazines on desk and tables, then rang for Hedwig.
"The mail?" she said. "Where did you put the letters this morning?"
Hedwig shook her head. "There no letters were this morning, mein
Fraulein. Not one at all."
"That's queer! All right." Hedwig was waved away. "I wonder if anything is the matter? Of course there isn't—only—there haven't been three Mondays since I left here that John's letter didn't come on the early mail." She straightened a rose that was falling out of a jar and stood off to watch the effect. "Nobody but John would write every week, when I don't write once in four—don't even read his letters for days after they come, sometimes. But I like to know they're here. I believe"—she clasped her hands behind her head—"I believe I wish I had let him come down to-night. No, I don't. But why didn't he write? He ought to have known—" She turned away. "It would serve me right if he never wrote again."
By seven o'clock she was on her way to the monthly meeting of the town council, which meeting was always held on the second Monday evening in the month, and as she started off she waved to Hedwig, standing in the door.
"Telephone Miss Gibbie not to sit up for me," she called back. "I'm going to stay all night with her, but it may be late before I get there. Don't forget!" And again the hand was waved; and as she drove down the dusty road, Ephraim beside her, the uncertainty of the morning faded and her spirits rose at the prospect of the experience awaiting.