What Necessity Knows by Lily Dougall (read aloud .TXT) 📖

to his impatience the minutes did not seem long before he saw her return round the same corner of the outbuildings, her brother beside her, lantern in hand.

So in the waning daylight the three went together to the Harmon house, and found torn bits of letters scattered on floor and window-sill near the spot where Alec had last seen the unlooked-for apparition. The letters, to all appearance, had belonged to the dentist, but they were torn very small. The three searched the house all through by the light of more than one candle, and came out again into the darkness of the summer night, for the time nothing wiser concerning the mystery, but feeling entirely at home with one another.


CHAPTER X.

Although Mrs. Rexford had been without an indoor servant for several months of the winter, she had been fortunate enough to secure one for the summer. Her dairy had not yet reached the point of producing marketable wares, but it supplied the family and farm hands with milk and butter, and, since the cows had been bought in spring, the one serving girl had accomplished this amount of dairy work satisfactorily. The day after Sophia and Harold had made their evening excursion through the Harmon house, this maid by reason of some ailment was laid up, and the cows became for the first time a difficulty to the household, for the art of milking was not to be learnt in an hour, and it had not yet been acquired by any member of the Rexford family.

Harold was of course in the fields. Sophia went to the village to see if she could induce anyone to come to their aid; but, hard as it was to obtain service at any time, in the weeks of harvest it was an impossibility. When she returned, she went in by the lane, the yard, and the kitchen door. All the family had fallen into the habit of using this door more than any other. Such habits speak for themselves.

"Mamma!"--she took off her gloves energetically as she spoke--"there is nothing for it but to ask Louise to get up and do the milking--the mere milking--and I will carry the pails."

Louise was the pale-faced Canadian servant. She often told them she preferred to be called "Loulou," but in this she was not indulged.

Mrs. Rexford stirred Dottie's porridge in a small saucepan. Said she, "When Gertrude Bennett is forced to milk her cows, she waits till after dark; her mother told me so in confidence. Yes, child, yes"--this was to Dottie who, beginning to whimper, put an end to the conversation.

Sophia did not wait till after dark: it might be an excellent way for Miss Bennett, but it was not her way. Neither did she ask her younger sisters to help her, for she knew that if caught in the act by any acquaintance the girls were at an age to feel an acute distress. She succeeded, by the administration of tea and tonic, in coaxing the servant to perform her part. Having slightly caught up her skirts and taken the empty pails on her arms, Sophia started ahead down the lane.

Just then some one turned in from the road. It was Eliza, and she was in too much haste to take heed of the milking gear.

"Oh, Miss Sophia. I'm so glad I've met you, and alone. We've been so busy at the hotel with a cheap excursion, I've been trying all day to get a word to you. Look here!" (she thrust some crumpled letters into Sophia's hand) "I thought you'd better see those, and say something to the girls. They'll get themselves into trouble if they go on as silly as this. It seems it's some silly 'post office' they've had in a tree between them and that Harkness. I've had that letter from him, and certainly, Miss Sophia, if he's as much to blame as them, he's acted civil enough now. He had a better heart than most men, I believe, for all he bragged about it. He forgot where he had thrown their letters as waste paper, and you'll see by that letter of his he took some trouble to write to me to go and get them, for fear they should be found and the girls talked about."

Sophia stood still in dismay.

"There!" said Eliza, "I knew you'd feel hurt, but I thought you'd better know for all that. There's no harm done, only they'd better have a good setting down about it." She began to turn back again. "I must go," she said, "the dining-room girls are rushed off their feet; but if I were you, Miss Sophia, I wouldn't say a word to anyone else about it. Some one came in while I was getting these letters, but it was dark and I dodged round and made off without being seen, so that I needn't explain. It wouldn't do for the girls, you know--"

Sophia turned the letters about in her hand. One was from Cyril Harkness to Eliza; the others were poor, foolish little notes, written by Blue and Red. Louise came out of the yard and passed them into the field, and Sophia thrust the letters into her dress.

That Eliza should naively give her advice concerning the training of her sisters was a circumstance so in keeping with the girl's force of character that her late mistress hardly gave it a thought, nor had she time at that moment to wonder where the letters had been left and found. It was the thought that the family reputation for sense and sobriety had apparently been in the hands of an unprincipled stranger, and had been preserved only by his easy good-nature and by Eliza's energy, that struck her with depressing and irritating force. Had the girls come in her way just then, the words she would have addressed to them would have been more trenchant than wise, but as Eliza was by her side, retreating towards the road, she felt no desire to discuss the matter with her.

She observed now that Eliza looked worn and miserable as she had never seen her look before, unless, indeed, it had been in the first few days she ever saw her. The crowded state of the hotel could hardly account for this. "I hope, Eliza, that having despised that suitor of yours when he was here, you are not repenting now he is gone."

The girl looked at her dully, not understanding at first.

"Speaking of Cyril Harkness?" she cried; "good gracious, no, Miss Sophia." But the response was not given in a sprightly manner, and did not convey any conviction of its truth.

"You must be working too hard."

"Well, I needn't. I'll tell you a bit of good fortune that's come to me. Mrs. Glass--one of our boarders--you know her?"

"The stout person that comes to church in red satin?"

"Yes; and she's rich too. Well, she's asked me to go and visit her in Montreal in the slack time this next winter; and she's such a good boarder every summer, you know, Mr. Hutchins is quite set on me going. She's promised to take me to parties and concerts, and the big rink, and what not. Ah, Miss Sophia, you never thought I could come that sort of thing so soon, did you?"

"And are you not going?"

Sophia's question arose from a certain ring of mockery in Eliza's relation of her triumph.

"No, I'm not going a step. D'you think I'm going to be beholden to her, vulgar old thing! And besides, she talks about getting me married. I think there's nothing so miserable in the world as to be married."

"Most women are much happier married." Sophia said this with orthodox propriety, although she did not altogether believe it.

"Yes, when they can't fend for themselves, poor things. But to be for ever tied to a house and a man, never to do just what one liked! I'm going to take pattern by you, Miss Sophia, and not get married."

Eliza went back to the village, and Sophia turned toward the pasture and the college. The first breath of autumn wind was sweeping down the road to meet her. All about the first sparks of the great autumnal fire of colour were kindling. In the nearer wood she noticed stray boughs of yellow or pink foliage displayed hanging over the dark tops of young spruce trees, or waving against the blue of the unclouded sky. It was an air to make the heavy heart jocund in spite of itself, and the sweet influences of this blithe evening in the pasture field were not lost upon Sophia, although she had not the spirit now to wish mischievously, as before, that Mrs. and Miss Bennett, or some of their friends, would pass to see her carry the milk in daylight. It was a happy pride that had been at the root of her defiance of public opinion, and her pride was depressed now, smarting under the sharp renewal of the conviction that her sisters were naughty and silly, and that their present training was largely to blame.

The Bennetts did not come by, neither did Mrs. Brown's carriage pass, nor a brake from the hotel. Sophia had carried home the milk of two cows and returned before anyone of the slightest consequence passed by. She was just starting with two more pails when Alec Trenholme came along at a fast trot on his brother's handsome cob. He was close by her before she had time to see who it was, and when he drew up his horse she felt strangely annoyed. Instinct told her that, while others might have criticised, this simple-hearted fellow would only compassionate her toil. Their mutual adventure of the previous evening had so far established a sense of comradeship with him that she did not take refuge in indifference, but felt her vanity hurt at his pity.

At that moment the simple iron semi-circle which the milk maid used to hold her pails off her skirts, became, with Sophia's handling, the most complex thing, and would in no wise adjust itself. Alec jumped from his horse, hung his bridle-rein over the gate-post as he entered the pasture, and made as if to take the pails as a matter of course.

Pride, vanity, conceit, whatever it may be that makes people dislike kindness when their need is obvious, produced in her an awkward gaiety. "Nay," said she, refusing; "why should you carry my milk for me?"

"Well, for one thing, we live too near not to know you don't do it usually."

"Still, it may be my special pleasure to carry it to-night; and if not, why should you help me with this any more than, for instance, in cooking the dinner to-morrow? I assure you my present pastoral occupation is much more romantic and picturesque than that."

But he took the half-filled pails (she had not attempted to carry full ones), and, pouring the contents of one into the other, proceeded to carry it.

"Since it is you who command," she cried, "shall I hold your horse in the meantime?"

With provoking literalism he gave a critical glance at the bridle. "He's all right," he said, not caring much, in truth, whether the cob broke loose or not.

So she followed him across the road into the lane, because it hardly seemed civil to let him go alone, and because he would not know what to do with the milk when he got to the yard. She did not, however, like this position.

"Do you know," she began again, "that I am very angry