“But I cannot eat. It chokes me. It seems so awfully still and strange and empty. As I should think it might be were somebody dead.”
Angelique’s scant patience was exhausted. Not only was her loyal heart tried by her master’s troubles, but she had had added labor to accomplish. During all that summer two strong and, at least one, willing lad had been at hand to do the various chores pertaining to all country homes, however isolated. That morning she had brought in her own supply of firewood, filled her buckets from the spring, attended the poultry, fed the oxen, milked Snowfoot, wrestled over the iniquity of Reynard, and grieved at the untimely death of the speckled rooster. “When he would have made such a lovely fricassee. Yes, indeed, ’twas a sinful waste!”
Though none of these tasks were new or arduous to her, she had not performed them during the past weeks, save and except the care of her cow. That she had never entrusted to anybody, not even the master; and it was to spare him that she had done some of the things he meant to attend to later. Now she had reached her limit.
“Angelique wants her breakfast, child. She has been long astir. After that the deluge!” quoted Mr. Dutton, with an attempt at lightness which did not agree with his real depression.
Margot made heroic efforts to act as usual, but they ended in failure, and as soon as might be her guardian pushed back his chair, and she promptly did the same.
“Now, I can ask as many questions as I please, can’t I? First, where are they?”
“They have gone across the lake, southward, I suppose. Toward whatever place or town Adrian selects. He will not come back, but Pierre will do so, after he has guided the other to some safe point beyond the woods. How soon I do not know, of course.”
“Gone! Without bidding me good-by? Gone to stay? Oh, uncle, how could he? I know you didn’t like him, but I did. He was—”
Margot dropped her face in her hands and sobbed bitterly. Then ashamed of her unaccustomed tears, she ran out of the house and as far from it as she could. But even the blue herons could give her no amusement, though they stalked gravely up the river bank and posed beside her, where she lay prone and disconsolate in Harmony Hollow. Her squirrels saw and wondered, for she had no returning chatter for them, even when they chased one another over her prostrate person and playfully pulled at her long hair.
“He was the only friend I ever had that was not old and wise in sorrow. It was true he seemed to bring a shadow with him, and while he was here I sometimes wished he would go, or had never come; yet now that he has—oh, it’s so awfully, awfully lonesome. Nobody to talk with about my dreams and fancies, nobody to talk nonsense, nobody to teach me any more songs—nobody but just old folks and animals. And he went—he went without a word or a single good-by!”