“Well, that settles it,” said Benton at last, with a hard gulp.
“Oh, I suppose so,” his wife assented.
On his part, now, he had a genuine regret for her disappointment from the sad safety of the trouble that would keep them at home; and on her part she could be glad of it if any sort of comfort could come out of it to him.
“Till she says go,” he added, “we’ve got to stay.”
“Oh yes,” his wife responded. “The worst of it is, we can’t even go back to Tuskingum.” He looked up suddenly at her, and she saw that he had not thought of this. She made “Tchk!” in sheer amaze at him.
“We won’t cross that river till we come to it,” he said, sullenly, but half-ashamed. The next morning the situation had not changed overnight, as they somehow both crazily hoped it might, and at breakfast, which they had at a table grown more remote from others with the thinning out of the winter guests of the hotel, the father and mother sat down alone in silence which was scarcely broken till Lottie and Boyne joined them.
“Where’s Ellen?” the boy demanded.
“She’s having her breakfast in her room,” Mrs. Kenton answered.
“She says she don’t want to eat anything,” Lottie reported. “She made the man take it away again.”
The gloom deepened in the faces of the father and mother, but neither spoke, and Boyne resumed the word again in a tone of philosophic speculation. “I don’t see how I’m going to get along, with those European breakfasts. They say you can’t get anything but cold meat or eggs; and generally they don’t expect to give you anything but bread and butter with your coffee. I don’t think that’s the way to start the day, do you, poppa?”