She sat all night in a chair beside the bed; in the morning she drowsed and dreamed that she was weeping on Bartley's shoulder, and he was joking her and trying to comfort her, as he used to do when they were first married; but it was the little girl, sitting up in her crib, and crying loudly for her breakfast. She put on the child a pretty frock that Bartley liked, and when she had dressed her own tumbled hair she went down stairs, feigning to herself that they should find him in the parlor. The servant was setting the table for breakfast, and the little one ran forward: “Baby's chair; mamma's chair; papa's chair!”
“Yes,” answered Marcia, so that the servant might hear too. “Papa will soon be home.”
She persuaded herself that he had gone as before for the night, and in this pretence she talked with the child at the table, and she put aside some of the breakfast to be kept warm for Bartley. “I don't know just when he may be in,” she explained to the girl. The utterance of her pretence that she expected him encouraged her, and she went about her work almost cheerfully.
At dinner she said, “Mr. Hubbard must have been called away, somewhere. We must get his dinner for him when he comes: the things dry up so in the oven.”
She put Flavia to bed early, and then trimmed the fire, and made the parlor cosey against Bartley's coming. She did not blame him for staying away the night before; it was a just punishment for her wickedness, and she should tell him so, and tell him that she knew he never was to blame for anything about Hannah Morrison. She enacted over and over in her mind the scene of their reconciliation. In every step on the pavement he approached the door; at last all the steps died away, and the second night passed.
Her head was light, and her brain confused with loss of sleep. When the child called her from above, and woke her out of her morning drowse, she went to the kitchen and begged the servant to give the little one its breakfast, saying that she was sick and wanted nothing herself. She did not say anything about Bartley's breakfast, and she would not think anything; the girl took the child into the kitchen with her, and kept it there all day.
Olive Halleck came during the forenoon, and Marcia told her that Bartley had been unexpectedly called away. “To New York,” she added, without knowing why.
“Ben sailed from there to-day,” said Olive sadly.
“Yes,” assented Marcia.
“We want you to come and take tea with us this evening,” Olive began.