Part 9 (2/2)
”I trust Annita perfectly,” said Elizabeth, her round chin tilted aggressively. ”And I'm sure I ought to know by this time.”
”I agree with you there, Lizzie, you ought to know, but you don't. That girl is carrying things out of your kitchen as fast as the grocer and the butcher can bring them in; I don't think you can afford to let her spend your husband's money as she pleases, and that is what it amounts to the way you're managing now.”
”But grandma,” protested Elizabeth, ”Sam looks over every one of the bills himself before he pays them.”
”It isn't your husband's place to do your work and his own too, my dear.”
Elizabeth hung her head, her face flaming with angry colour.
”You've been brought up to be a sensible, industrious, economical woman,” pursued Mrs. Carroll earnestly; ”but from what that Tipp girl said yesterday, I should imagine you'd taken leave of your senses. What does Samuel say to your spending so much money and being out so constant?”
”He--he likes to have me have a good time.”
”Well, I'll lose my guess if _he's_ having one,” said grandma pointedly.
”Samuel looked worried to death last night when Terita brought him the bills. And I took notice he didn't eat scarcely anything at dinner. For that matter, I didn't myself; there wasn't a thing on the table cooked properly. Now, Lizzie, I've said my say, and I'm going.” She kissed her granddaughter heartily. ”Take time to think it over, child, and mind you don't tell the Fripp girl what I've said. She could talk a bird off a bush without a bit of trouble.”
”I wonder if everybody gets as queer and unreasonable as grandma when they are old,” mused Elizabeth, as she picked her way daintily through the sloppy streets. ”I'm sure I hope I sha'n't. Of course Sam is all right. I guess he'd tell me the very first thing if he wasn't.”
Nevertheless, Mrs. Carroll's significant words had left an unpleasant echo in her mind which haunted her at intervals all day. Under its influence she made a bold incursion into her kitchen, after a luncheon of chipped beef, dry toast and indifferent baker's cake.
”Have we any cold chicken, Annita?” she asked hesitatingly. ”I--that is, I am expecting a few friends this afternoon, and I thought----”
Miss McMurtry faced about and eyed her mistress with lowering brows.
”There ain't any chicken in the place, Mrs. Brewster,” she said stonily; ”an' as I ain't in the habit of havin' parties sprung on me unbeknownst, I'll be leaving at the end of my month, which is to-morrow--_if_ you please.”
Elizabeth's new-found dignity enabled her to face the woman's angry looks without visible discomfiture. ”Very well, Annita,” she said quietly. ”Perhaps that will be best for both of us.”
CHAPTER X
Elizabeth greeted her husband that night with a speculative anxiety in her eyes born of the uncomfortable misgivings which had haunted her during the day. And when after dinner he dropped asleep over his evening paper she perceived with a sharp pang of apprehension that his face was thinner than she had ever seen it, that his healthy colour had paled somewhat, and that hitherto unnoticed lines had begun to show themselves about his mouth and eyes.
She reached for his hand which hung idly by his side, and the light touch awakened him. ”Oh, Sam,” she began, ”Grandma Carroll insisted upon it that you were looking ill, and I wanted to see if you had any fever; working over there in that unhealthy part of town, you might have caught something.”
”Who told you it was unhealthy?” he wanted to know. ”It really isn't at all, little girl, and you're not to worry about me--or anything.”
At just what point in his career Samuel Brewster had acquired the Quixotic idea that a woman, and particularly a young and beautiful woman, should not be allowed to taste the smallest drop of the world's bitterness he could not have explained. But the notion, albeit a mistaken one, was as much a part of himself as the blue of his steadfast eyes or the bronzy brown of his crisp locks.
”You're not,” he repeated positively, ”to give yourself the slightest anxiety about me. I never felt better in my life.” And he smiled determinedly.
”But, Sam dear, I shall be obliged to worry if you are going to be ill, or if--” a misty light breaking in upon her confused thoughts, ”you are keeping anything from me that I ought to know. I've been thinking about it all day, and I've been wondering if--” she lowered her voice cautiously--”Annita is perfectly reliable. I've always thought so till to-day. Anyway, she's going to leave to-morrow, and you'll be obliged to go back to my cooking for a while, till I can get some one else.”
The somewhat vague explanations which followed called for an examination of grocer's and butcher's accounts; and the two heads were bent so closely over the parti-coloured slips that neither heard the hasty preparations for departure going on in the rear.
”It looks to me as if our domestic had been spoiling the Egyptians,”
hazarded Sam, after half an hour of unsatisfactory work. ”But I really don't know how much meat, groceries and stuff we ought to be using.”
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