At this time Margaret was often away from home. After her visit to Mrs. Watson, one of her old schoolmates, who had recently married and settled in Bridgeton, begged her to come there for a visit; and she felt also that she must have change, so she promised to stay two weeks with her friend.
“Send for me if you need me for anything, no matter how trifling,” she said, when she left home.
Margaret had been at Bridgeton about ten days. It was a rainy evening, and she was sitting by the open fire with her friends, talking about school-days.
The dog, who had been sleeping on the hearth-rug, started suddenly, and, after cocking his ears in a listening attitude, rushed to the door, barking violently. Horses’ hoofs sounded on the road with the peculiar sucking thud that rain and mud lend; the gate banged to, and hurried footsteps crossed the piazza. Margaret, without knowing why, went quickly to the door and opened it before her friends comprehended what she was doing, or before any one knocked.
On the threshold, lantern in hand, stood Ezra Tolford. Water was streaming from the limp brim of his felt hat and ran down his rubber coat in little streams.
“I knew it was some one from home! What is it, father?” Margaret cried.
The Deacon had a white, scared look and moistened his lips with his tongue twice before he answered—“Waldsen is very sick; the doctor says it’s pneumonia. A lot of neighbours have come in and upset things under pretext of helping Andrea. Doctor Russell says we must have a nurse if he lasts through to-night, and I thought you’d want to know!”
Margaret did not hear the last words; she was already upstairs and back again, buttoning her thick coat as she came. Her friends protested against her going out on such a night, her father joining them, but not insistently. He seemed ill at ease, as if he had some secret on his mind.
Bidding good-by hastily, in another moment Margaret was in the wagon tucking the wraps around her and trying to hold her umbrella against the wind, while the Deacon turned the horses homeward, so content in having her with him that he forgot to speak. “Tell me all about it, father, and why you did not send for me sooner,” she said in an unsteady voice.
“Well, daughter, it all happened so quickly that there was no time for anything. Three days ago Waldsen went into the village with a load of feed, and it came on to rain heavily. He was all in a sweat handling the bags and got sopping wet driving back,—a thing that has happened to me a dozen times.”