“Mr. Harker was here the evening before last; he brought me some money,” she ventured at last.
“That was all right.”
“And Mr. Girard was very kind; he stayed here all that night—until your message came.”
“I hope you haven’t been talking about this all over the place.”
“No—oh, no,” said Lois, driving back the tears at this causeless injury. “Mr. Leverich—he was here one morning—said it was best not to. He was rather unpleasant, though. But nobody knows about your being away at all. You’re not going now, Justin—without even seeing baby?”
“I’ll see him to-night when I come home,” said Justin, rising. He kissed the children and his wife hastily, but she followed him into the hall, standing there, dumbly beseeching, while he brushed his hat with the hat-brush on the table, and then rummaged hastily as if for something else.
“Here are your gloves, if that is what you are looking for,” she said.
“Yes, thank you.” He bent over and kissed her again, as if really seeing her for the first time, with a whispered “Poor girl!” That momentary close embrace brought her a needed—oh, so needed!—crumb of comfort. She who had hungered so insatiably for recognition could be humbly thankful now for the two words that spoke of an inner bond.
But all day she could not get rid of that feeling of suspense that had been hers for five days past; the strain was to end, of course, with Justin’s return, but it had not ended—in some sad, weighting fashion it seemed to have just begun. What was he so worried about? Was she never to hear any more?
That night Girard came over, but with him was another visitor—William Snow. No sun could brown that baby-fair skin of William’s, but he had an indefinably large and Western air; the very way in which he wore his clothes showed his independence. Dosia did not notice his swift, covert, shamefaced glance at her when she came into the room where he was talking to Lois—his avoidance of her the year before had dropped clear out of her mind; but his expression changed to one of complacent delight as she ran to him instantly and clasped his arms with both hands to cry, “Oh, Billy, Billy, I’m so glad to see you! I am so glad—I can’t tell you how glad I am!”