“Delicious coffee.”
“I am going to get a beautiful dinner for you,” Charlotte said. The second cup of coffee had reassured her. She began to think her father did not look so ill, after all. She was herself in a state of perfect content and happiness. She felt a sense of triumph, of daring, which exhilarated her. She adored her father, and how cleverly she had managed this coming back. How impossible she had made it for any one to gainsay her! After breakfast her father went out, telling her he should be home by noon, and she busied herself about the house. She was an absolute novice about such work, but she found in it a charm of novelty, and she developed a handiness which filled her with renewed triumph. She kept considering what would her father have done if she had not returned.
“He would have had no supper when he came home last night,” Charlotte said—“no supper, for he evidently was not going to the inn, and the fire was out. How dreadful it would have been for him!” She imagined perfectly her father's sensations of delighted surprise and relief when he espied her, to welcome him, when he felt the warmth of the fire, when he smelled the supper. The pure delight of a woman over the comfort which she gives a child or a man whom she loves was over her. She realized her father's comfort as she had never realized any of her own. She fairly danced about her work. She put the bedrooms in order, she washed the breakfast dishes. Then she meditated going down-town and buying a fish for dinner. Carroll was very fond of baked fish. About ten o'clock she had finished her work, and she put on her hat and coat and set forth. She ordered the fish, and paid for it. She gave the man a five-dollar note to change. He looked at it suspiciously. When she had gone out, he and two other men who were standing in the little market looked at one another.
“Guess the world's comin' to an end,” he said, laughing, “when they pay cash with five-dollar bills.”
“Sure it was a good one?” said one of the other men.
“I thought all Carroll's family had went,” said the third man.
“Guess they didn't have enough money to take this one, and you can't beat the Pennsylvania Railroad nohow,” said the fishman.
Charlotte went on to the butcher's, bought and paid for some ham, then to Anderson's for eggs. The old clerk came forward as she entered, and answered her question about the eggs.
“Do you want them charged?” he asked.
“No, I will pay for them,” replied Charlotte, and took her little purse, and just then Anderson, having heard her voice, looked incredulously out of his office, his morning paper in hand. Charlotte laid some money on the counter, and stepped forward at once. She saw with a sort of wonder, and an agitation within herself for which she could not account, that the man was deadly white, that he fairly trembled.