What Necessity Knows eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 574 pages of information about What Necessity Knows.

What Necessity Knows eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 574 pages of information about What Necessity Knows.

The Scotchman, exhilarated by the cooling of the atmosphere, genially invited Trenholme to a longer walk.  Chellaston Mountain, with its cool shades and fine prospect, was very near.  A lane turned from the high road, which led to the mountain’s base.  A hospitable farmhouse stood where the mountain path began to ascend, suggesting sure offer of an evening meal.  Trenholme looked at the peaceful lane, the beautiful hill, and all the sunny loveliness of the land, and refused the invitation.  He had not time, he said.

So they walked back the mile they had come, and Trenholme little thought how soon, and with what agitation, he would pass that way again.

CHAPTER XVIII.

The next day, before Trenholme had had time to devise a plan for seeing Miss Rexford, Mrs. Martha brought him a telegram.  She watched him as he drew his finger through the poor paper of the envelope, watched him as one might watch another on the eve of some decisive event; yet she could not have expected much from a telegram—­they came too often.

“Ha!” cried Trenholme, “we are going to have visitors, Mrs. Martha.”

A good deal to Trenholme’s surprise, the message was from Alec, and from a point no further away than Quebec.  It stated that he was there with Bates, who was ill, and he thought the best thing would be to bring him with him to Chellaston, if his brother had house-room enough.

The answers we give to such appeals are more often the outcome of life-long habit than instances of separate volition.  No question of what answer to send occurred to Trenholme’s mind as he pencilled his reply, assuring a welcome to the sick man.

When the answer was despatched he saw that, as fate had thrust the notice of this arrival between him and the proposed interview with Sophia; it would be better, after all, to wait only a day or two more, until he knew his brother’s mind.

He heard nothing more from Alec that day.  The day after was Saturday, and it rained heavily.

“What time will the gentlemen arrive?” asked Mrs. Martha, but not as if she took much interest in the matter.

“I can’t tell,” he replied.  “They will probably let us know; but it’s best to be ready when guests may come any time, isn’t it?”

He asked her this with a cheering smile, because her manner was strange, and he wished to rouse her to a sense of her duties.

“Yes, sir; ’twouldn’t seem like as if we was truly expecting and hoping unless we did our best to be ready.”

The fervour of her answer surprised him.

For some time past Winifred Rexford had been spending part of each morning learning housewifery of Mrs. Martha.  That day, because of the rain, Trenholme insisted upon keeping her to dinner with him.  He brought her into his dining-room with playful force, and set her at the head of his table.  It was a great pleasure to him to have the child.  He twitted her with her improvement in the culinary art, demanding all sorts of impossible dishes in the near future for his brother’s entertainment.  He was surprised at the sedateness of her answers, and at a strange look of excited solicitude that arose in her eyes.  It seemed to him that she was several times on the point of saying something to him, and yet she did not speak.

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What Necessity Knows from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.