She did not seem to have, indeed, for she made no reference to them by look nor speech, but talked rapidly, and with an air of constraint, of things nearer in time, and listened with affected interest while he told the latest city news, and the latest news of his own work; how high the engine spouted; of the tiny model locomotive he had built, all silver, and gold, and fine steel; of the money he expected to make by his new patent; of an accident that had happened in his shop—a German organist, with two or three others, had come to look at his machinery, and got his hand crushed in it, which would put a stop to his playing.
Bessie looked up with an expression of pain. “Poor man!” she murmured. “How miserable he must be!”
“Yes; I was sorry for him,” the husband replied. “They say he cared for nothing but music. His name is Verheyden.”
“Poor man!” Bessie sighed again, looking down. “Those machines are always hurting some one.”
“It was his own fault,” the machinist said hastily. “Did he suppose that the engine was going to stop when he put his forefinger on it? Why, that machine would grind up an elephant, and never mismake its face. But it is the first time any one was ever hurt by a machine of mine.”
He did not understand the glance she gave him. It was not pleasant, but what it meant he knew not. She was thinking: “It is not the first time one has been hurt so.”
Aunt Nancy found business elsewhere, and left the couple to themselves.
“I forgot you were coming away that day, Bessie,” her husband said hastily, the moment they were alone. “I never thought of it till I was five miles off, and then I concluded that you must have changed your mind, or you would have told me not to go.”
“You know I never tell you not to go anywhere,” she replied coldly.
He colored. “But you know that I didn't mean to have you go to the depot alone. When I read what you wrote to Jamie, I felt sorry enough.”