Later, as he sat and smoked in the parlor he tried to read the daily newspaper that had been left at his door, but even the boldest head-lines foiled to catch and rivet his attention. Taking a hammer and nails, he went into the back yard to repair a fence; but he had scarcely started to lift the first plank into place when the incongruity of the thing clutched him as in a vise. What was he doing? Why was he thinking of a thing so inconsequential as that? And for whom was he putting the fence to rights? With an oath born of sheer bleak agony, he threw the hammer from him and dropped the nails and plank to the ground. He had loved the place; he and Tilly had called it their "Cottage of Delight"; he had thought he would keep it in order, and even improve it, but all that was gone. He went back to the hillside. He watched the afternoon melt away, saw the sun go down into a bed of crimson and pink and the filmy cloud-curtains being drawn about the molten sleeper.
It was growing dark when he went back to the cottage. Dora was in the kitchen, preparing his supper. He was vaguely angered by her attention to him. He appreciated her doglike fidelity, but it made him impatient, for she was too small, young, and weak to do all that she was doing.
"You must go home," he blurted out, standing in the doorway and surveying her. "I'm able to look out for myself. I'm not hungry, anyway, now, for you have filled me up to the neck."
She smiled wistfully. There was a smudge of soot on her nose which gave her face a grotesque look. Her bare legs and feet were dust-coated and scrawny.
"I want to be here when Mr. Cavanaugh comes back," she contended, almost defiantly, a shadow of rigid doggedness in her eyes.
"But you can't," he retorted with irritation. "It will be late at night and you should be in bed."
"I want to know what he has to say," Dora persisted, putting more wood into the range. "Tilly was nice and good to me, and I want to know if she is coming back. Besides—besides, you want her."
"You can't sit up around here," he said, firmly. "You've got to go home."
She said nothing. He thought he had offended her and was sorry for it, but when supper was over he prevailed upon her to go. "Poor little rat!" he mused, as he stood at the gate and watched her vanish in the night. "She's never had a chance, and she'll never have one. Huh! Sam's God and old Whaley's is busy counting the hairs of her head and no harm will ever come to her—oh no, none at all!"
John paced back and forth in the little front yard. Eight o'clock came; nine; ten, and a little later he heard the whistle of the south-bound train as it drew near the town. The last street-car for the night would be leaving the Square in a few minutes. Cavanaugh would take it. He seldom rode in a cab, and time was too valuable for him to walk to-night.