"I shall preserve it as a souvenir of the day and place," observed Sarah, slipping it into her pocket.
Twilight overtook them before they reached home, and the night was too cloudy and damp for a promenade, such as they often had in the garden walks and lane, or for the customary family gathering in the long porch. Yet Aunt Sarah was surprised that Philip was apparently content to spend the evening in the sitting-room, with herself and husband by to spoil the tete-a-tete he must be longing for.
Still more confounded was she, when, after her clever strategy of coaxing Uncle Nathan into the kitchen, that the coast might be clear, she heard Philip's step close behind them.
"I must clean my gun to-night, aunt," he said, taking it from the corner. "I shall not have time to do it to-morrow."
With the utmost nonchalance he began the operation, whistling softly a lively air over his work. Aunt Sarah gave her partner a look of bewildered despair, which he returned by a confirmatory nod, and a smile, half comic, half regretful.
After breakfast next morning the nephew-guest said affectionate farewells to his relatives and Jeannie; a grave, gentle adieu to Sarah, accompanied by a momentary pressure of the hand, that may have meant much or little, and upon the snug homestead settled a quiet that was dreariness itself to one of its inmates.
CHAPTER VI.
Meanwhile, how had the time sped to the nominal head of the Hunt household—the solitary, toiling father and husband? The servants were dismissed when "the family" left town, although Mr. Hunt continued to sleep at home. A peripatetic maid-of-all-work—what the English denominate a charwoman—was engaged to come early every morning to clear up the only room in the establishment that was used before the cashier went out for his breakfast, which he procured at a restaurant pretty far down town. The same quiet coffee-house furnished him with dinner and an early tea, after which last refreshment he was at liberty to pass the evening in whatever manner he liked best. There was nothing in the city worth seeing at this season, even if he had not lost all taste for shows and gayety. Those of his acquaintances who were not absent with their wives and daughters were living like himself, furniture in overalls, carpets covered, apartments closed, with the exception, perhaps, of one bedroom, and had no place in which to receive him if he had been in the habit of visiting, which he was not. He was very tired, moreover, by the time night came on, and as the heat increased and the days grew longer, his strength waned more and more, and his spirits with it. Meekly and uncomplainingly he plodded through his routine of bank duties, so steady and so faithful that his fellow-workers and customers had come to regard him as a reliable fixture, a piece of machinery, whose winding up was self-performed and whose accuracy was infallible.
When, therefore, on a sultry August afternoon, he turned to leave his desk at the close of business hours, grew terribly pale and dropped upon the floor in a fit of death-like faintness, there was great consternation, and as much wonder as if no human clock-work had ever given out before, under a like process of exhausting demands.