CHAPTER XXX
THE COMMITTEE DECIDE
The earlier days of summer were passing rapidly. And with their passage Kate Seton’s variations of mood became remarkable. There were times when her excited cheerfulness astounded her sister, and there were times when her depression caused her the greatest anxiety. Kate was displaying a variableness and uncertainty to which Helen was quite unaccustomed, and it left the girl laboring under a great strain of worry.
She strove very hard to, as she termed it, localize her sister’s changes of mood, and in this she was not without a measure of success. Whenever the doings of the church committee were discussed Kate’s mood dropped to zero, and sometimes below that point. It was obvious that the decision to demolish the old landmark in the service of the church was causing her an alarm and anxiety which would far better have fitted one of the old village wives, eaten up with superstition, than a woman of Kate’s high-spirited courage. Then, too, the work of her little farm seemed to worry her. Her attention to it in these days became almost feverish. Whereas, until recently, all her available time was given to church affairs, now these were almost entirely neglected in favor of the farm. Kate was almost always to be found in company of her two hired men, working with a zest that ill suited the methods of her male helpers.
On one occasion Helen ventured to remark upon it in her inconsequent fashion, a fashion often used to disguise her real feelings, her real interest.
Kate had just returned from a long morning out on the wheat land. She was weary, and dusty, and thirsty. And she had just thirstily drained a huge glass of barley water.
“For the Lord’s sake, Kate!” Helen cried in pretended dismay. “When I see you drink like that I kind of feel I’m growing fins all over me.”
Kate smiled, but without lightness.
“Get right out in this July sun and try to shame your hired men into doing a man’s work, and see how you feel then,” she retorted. “Fins?—why, you’d give right up walking, and grow a full-sized tail, and an uncomfortable crop of scales.”