“There’s the whistle!” said Betty, suddenly jumping up and making for the train to meet her best friend.
The subject of this conversation had meanwhile been wending his way to the town. He perhaps had looked forward to a time of pecuniary ease and leisure, when, instead of tinkering round the house, he might play golf. But no one, not even his wife, quite understood what a holiday meant to Mr. Harlow.
To escape for a solid block of sunlit secular hours out of the grimy, artificially lighted, badly ventilated office, with its white, tired-looking clerks, and its association of intricate, harassing toil—to escape from this to the peacefulness of green grass, and the click of the lawn-mower, and the flickering of shade from the new leaves of the elms that arched the street, and the sweet voices of little children calling to one another, was to go back into a little corner of the emerald fields of boyhood.
Mr. Harlow was not in the least old; he was indeed barely middle-aged; yet there were moments when he knew that he was not so young as he had been. On the spring morning of a holiday the thought, even if it came, was robbed of its shadow.
His face had the kind smile that children always trusted, as he stopped to pick up a tiny, curly-haired girl who had fallen in his way. The action showed him the letter, which he had forgotten, still in his hand.
He opened and read it as he walked, stopped short and read it again with knitted brows. Then he walked on and on, as one deep in thought, until he came to the other side of the village. He did not go near the stores, but strolled instead towards a large, unoccupied house that stood surrounded by lawns and trees, well apart from its neighbours. There was a clear view of the hills from the porch. Mr. Harlow walked round the house and through the garden, and sat on the porch steps, still deep in thought.
“I did not know what had become of you,” said his wife, running down the walk to meet him as he once more came in through the gate. “Why, it’s after twelve o’clock! I was afraid something had happened to you! I suppose you’ve been talking all this time to somebody.” She did not give him an opportunity to answer, but drew him up beside her to one of the piazza chairs. “I know you won’t have time to mend all those things I asked you to, without taking up all your afternoon, and I don’t want you to do that. But I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to fix the leg of the refrigerator.”
“It would be better to buy a new one, wouldn’t it?” asked Mr. Harlow, impartially.
“‘Better to buy a new one!’ I only wish I could. How queer you act, David! Aren’t you going to put the netting on the screens now? I think you’ll have time before dinner; it’s to be at one o’clock to-day.”
“I can’t do the screens now, Min. The store was shut when I went to buy the nails. Who’s that talking to Betty?”