All this was long before the hour at which ordinary mortals have their breakfast, before even Mrs. Joscelyn, trembling and pale, had ventured to get up. The morning had been a long one for the poor lady; she had not slept any more than her daughter; she had lain still, not daring to move after all the house was astir, feeling as if she were fixed to her uneasy bed by a stake. She writhed upon it faintly, but could not pull it up, and lay still with her ears open to every sound till her husband, usually early enough, but whose disturbed night had made him late this morning of all mornings, got up and took himself away. Then it was for the first time that poor Mrs. Joscelyn really felt a little of the warmth of that sympathy for which she had longed all her life. Joscelyn had scarcely stamped off with his big tread downstairs, when an equally firm, if not so loud, step came up, and after a moment Joan appeared at her mother’s bedside with a cup of tea in her hand.
“Here is something to comfort you a bit, mother,” she said. Mrs. Joscelyn like most nervous women believed that there was a kind of salvation in tea.
“Oh! have you any news of my Harry, Joan? that will comfort me more than anything else,” she cried.
“Now, mother,” said Joan, “why will you make a fuss? Could I send over to the ‘Red Lion’ first thing in the morning to ask, is Harry lodging in your house? as if we were frightened of him. We’ve no reason to be frightened of him that I know. Am I to go and give him a bad character because father’s behaved bad, and Harry’s taken offence. We mustn’t be unreasonable. You wouldn’t like to raise an ill name on the poor boy.”
“Oh, no, no—anything but that,” Mrs. Joscelyn said. She was silenced by this plea; but her heart was still torn with anxiety. She looked wistfully in her daughter’s face with her lips trembling. “Do you think there is nothing that can be done without exposing him, Joan?”
“Well, mother, I’ll see. We don’t want to expose anybody. I’ve told a heap of fibs myself,” said Joan, with a broad smile, “and all the women think they’ve caught me. I know what they’re thinking, they’re wondering who I had to chatter with at the door. They’ll maybe on the whole,” she added, laughing, “think all the better of me if they think I am courtin’—so I will let them think what they like, and we must expose nobody. Father’s a trial, but as long as we can we must just keep him to ourselves.”
“Ah, Joan,” said Mrs. Joscelyn, wringing her thin hands, “you can laugh, but I feel a great deal more like crying. I can think upon nothing but my poor boy.”
“Well, mother,” said Joan, “crying is not my line. I’ll not pretend to more; but it’s just as well there is one of us that can laugh, or what would become of us both I don’t know. Take your tea; it will be quite cold; and lie still and get a rest. The very first news I have I will bring you, and you’re far better out of the way if you’ll take my advice.”
“I wish I was out of the way altogether. I wish I were in my grave. When I was young I could bear it, but now my heart’s failed me. Oh, I just wish that once for all I was out of the way!”
“You make too much fuss, mother,” said Joan. “I am always telling you. If you could take things easy it would be far better. Out of the way! and what would Liddy do, poor little pet, when she comes home?”