The next day the snow was deeper by a foot, but this did not deter the
Squire from making his proposed trip to Belden. He started immediately
after breakfast, prepared to sift matters to the bottom.
An air of tension and anxiety pervaded the household all that long,
miserable day. Anna was tortured with doubts. Should she slip away
quietly without telling, or should she make her humiliating confession
to Kate? Mrs. Bartlett, who knew the object of her husband's errand,
could not control her nerves. She knew intuitively "that something was
going to happen," as the good soul put it to herself.
Altogether it was one of those nerve-wracking days that come from time
to time in the best regulated households, apparently for no other
purpose but to prove the fact that a solitary existence is not
necessarily the most unhappy.
Mrs. Bartlett, for the first time in her life, was worried about Dave.
He was moody and morose, even to her, his sworn friend and ally, with
whom he had never had a word's difference. He had gone off that
morning shortly after the Squire left the house; and his mother,
watching him carefully at breakfast, noticed that he had shoved away
his plate with the food untasted.
A fatal symptom to the ever-watchful maternal eye.
Kate felt sulky because her aunt and uncle had been urging her to marry
Dave, and apparently Dave had no affection for her beyond that of a
cousin, the situation irritating her in the extreme.
"Aunt Louisa, what is the matter with every one?" she said, flouncing
into the kitchen. "Something seems to have jarred the family nerves.
Here is uncle off on some mysterious business, Dave goes off in the
snow in a tantrum, and you look as if you had just buried your last
friend." And the young lady left the room as suddenly as she entered
it.
"It does feel as if trouble was brewing," Mrs. Bartlett admitted to
Anna, with a gloomy shake of the head. "I'm getting that worried about
Dave, he's been away all day, and it's not usual for him to stay away
like this." Her voice broke a little, and she left the room hurriedly.
He came in almost immediately, stamping the snow from his boots and
looking twice as savage as when he went away.
"Mrs. Bartlett had been worrying about you all day, Mr. David," Anna
said as she turned from the dresser with her arms full of plates.
"And did you care, Anna, that I was not here?" He gave her the
appealing glance of a great mastiff who hopes for a friendly pat on the
head.