“I don’t know,” answered Lucy a trifle impatiently.

Again Ellen studied the distance.

“Look!” she cried an instant later. “Look! ’Liza’s callin’ an’ motionin’ to ’em. They’re droppin’ their shovels and runnin’ for the house like a lot of scared sheep. Probably Martin’s comin’, an’ they don’t want him to catch ’em. There! What did I tell you? It is Martin. I can see him drivin’ over the hill. Watch ’em skitter!” 87

87

Lured more by the desire to see Martin than to observe his panic-stricken sisters, Lucy went to the window. It was even as Ellen had said. There were the retreating forms of the three female Howes disappearing in at the side door; and there was Martin, his tall figure looming in sight at the heels of his bay mare.

“He’s a fine looking man, isn’t he?” Lucy remarked with thoughtless impulsiveness.

“What!”

“I say he is fine looking,” repeated the girl. “What broad shoulders he has, and how magnificently he carries his head!”

“You call that fine looking, do you?” sniffed her aunt.

“Yes. Don’t you?”

“Martin Howe ain’t my style of man.”

“But he’s so strong and splendid!”

“I never saw a splendid Howe yet,” was Ellen’s icy retort.

She turned from the window, took up a cloth, and went to scrubbing the paint viciously.

Lucy, realizing the tactlessness of her observation, tried by light, good-humored chatter to efface its memory; but all attempts to blot it from her aunt’s mind were useless, and the 88 relations between the two women remained strained for the rest of the day. So strained and uncomfortable were they that Lucy, wearied out by her hard work, was only too glad to bid Ellen good night and seek her own room early.

88

Through its windows long shafts of moonlight fell across the floor, flecking it with jagged, grotesque images of the trees outside. Once alone, she did not immediately start to undress, 

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