"We'll manage that, or at least I will. I'll work on her fears, so she won't any more dare to say a word about us than to cut her own head off."

"All right, Peg. I can trust you to do what's right."

Ida sank down on the floor of the closet into which she had been thrust.

Utter darkness was around her, and a darkness as black seemed to hang over all her prospects of future happiness. She had been s.n.a.t.c.hed in a moment from parents, or those whom she regarded as such, and from a comfortable and happy, though humble home, to this dismal place. In place of the kindness and indulgence to which she had been accustomed, she was now treated with harshness and cruelty.

CHAPTER XVII

SUSPENSE

"It doesn't, somehow, seem natural," said the cooper, as he took his seat at the tea table, "to sit down without Ida. It seems as if half the family were gone."

"Just what I've said to myself twenty times to-day," remarked his wife.

"n.o.body can tell how much a child is to them till they lose it."

"Not lose it," corrected Jack.

"I didn't mean to say that."

"When you used that word, mother, it made me feel just as if Ida wasn't coming back."

"I don't know why it is," said Mrs. Harding, thoughtfully, "but I've had that same feeling several times today. I've felt just as if something or other would happen to prevent Ida's coming back."

"That is only because she's never been away before," said the cooper, cheerfully. "It isn't best to borrow trouble, Martha; we shall have enough of it without."

"You never said a truer word, brother," said Rachel, mournfully. "Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward. This world is a vale of tears, and a home of misery. Folks may try and try to be happy, but that isn't what they're sent here for."

"You never tried very hard, Aunt Rachel," said Jack.

"It's my fate to be misjudged," said his aunt, with the air of a martyr.

"I don't agree with you in your ideas about life, Rachel," said her brother. "Just as there are more pleasant than stormy days, so I believe there is much more of brightness than shadow in this life of ours, if we would only see it."

"I can't see it," said Rachel.

"It seems to me, Rachel, you take more pains to look at the clouds than the sun."

"Yes," chimed in Jack, "I've noticed whenever Aunt Rachel takes up the newspaper, she always looks first at the deaths, and next at the fatal accidents and steamboat explosions."

"If," retorted Rachel, with severe emphasis, "you should ever be on board a steamboat when it exploded, you wouldn't find much to laugh at."

"Yes, I should," said Jack, "I should laugh--"

"What!" exclaimed Rachel, horrified.

"On the other side of my mouth," concluded Jack. "You didn't wait till I'd finished the sentence."

"I don't think it proper to make light of such serious matters."

"Nor I Aunt Rachel," said Jack, drawing down the corners of his mouth.

"I am willing to confess that this is a serious matter. I should feel as they say the cow did, that was thrown three hundred feet up into the air."

"How's that?" inquired his mother.

"Rather discouraged," answered Jack.

All laughed except Aunt Rachel, who preserved the same severe composure, and continued to eat the pie upon her plate with the air of one gulping down medicine.

In the morning all felt more cheerful.

"Ida will be home to-night," said Mrs. Harding, brightly. "What an age it seems since she went away! Who'd think it was only twenty-four hours?"

"We shall know better how to appreciate her when we get her back," said her husband.

"What time do you expect her home, mother? What did Mrs. Hardwick say?"

"Why," said Mrs. Harding, hesitating, "she didn't say as to the hour; but I guess she'll be along in the course of the afternoon."

"If we only knew where she had gone, we could tell better when to expect her."

"But as we don't know," said the cooper, "we must wait patiently till she comes."

"I guess," said Mrs. Harding, with the impulse of a notable housewife, "I'll make some apple turnovers for supper to-night. There's nothing Ida likes so well."

"That's where Ida is right," said Jack, smacking his lips. "Apple turnovers are splendid."

"They are very unwholesome," remarked Rachel.

"I shouldn't think so from the way you eat them, Aunt Rachel," retorted Jack. "You ate four the last time we had them for supper."

"I didn't think you'd begrudge me the little I eat," said his aunt, dolefully. "I didn't think you counted the mouthfuls I took."

"Come, Rachel, don't be so unreasonable," said her brother. "n.o.body begrudges you what you eat, even if you choose to eat twice as much as you do. I dare say Jack ate more of the turnovers than you did."

"I ate six," said Jack, candidly.

Rachel, construing this into an apology, said no more.

"If it wasn't for you, Aunt Rachel, I should be in danger of getting too jolly, perhaps, and spilling over. It always makes me sober to look at you."

"It's lucky there's something to make you sober and stiddy," said his aunt. "You are too frivolous."

Evening came, but it did not bring Ida. An indefinable sense of apprehension oppressed the minds of all. Martha feared that Ida's mother, finding her so attractive, could not resist the temptation of keeping her.

"I suppose," she said, "that she has the best claim to her, but it would be a terrible thing for us to part with her."