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Mr. Jack Hamlin’s Mediation
by
“No,” she said quickly. “That is,” she stopped with a sudden surge of color in her face that startled her, “there was–a man–here, in the kitchen–who had a lame horse, and who wanted to get a fresh one. But he went away an hour ago. And he wasn’t in this room–at least, after it was fixed up. So I’ve had no company.”
She felt herself again blushing at having blushed, and a little terrified. There was no reason for it. But for Jack’s warning, she would have been quite ready to tell her husband all. She had never blushed before him over her past life; why she should now blush over seeing Jack, of all people! made her utter a little hysterical laugh. I am afraid that this experienced little woman took it for granted that her husband knew that if Jack or any man had been there as a clandestine lover, she would not have blushed at all. Yet with all her experience, she did not know that she had blushed simply because it was to Jack that she had confessed that she loved the man before her. Her husband noted the blush as part of her general excitement. He permitted her to drag him into the room and seat him before the hearth, where she sank down on one knee to pull off his heavy rubber boots. But he waved her aside at this, pulled them off with his own hands, and let her take them to the kitchen and bring back his slippers. By this time a smile had lighted up his hard face. The room was certainly more comfortable and cheerful. Still he was a little worried; was there not in these changes a falling away from the grace of self-abnegation which she had so sedulously practiced?
When supper was served by Jane, in the dull dining-room, Mr. Rylands, had he not been more engaged in these late domestic changes, might have noticed that the Missouri girl waited upon him with a certain commiserating air that was remarkable by its contrast with the frigid ceremonious politeness with which she attended her mistress. It had not escaped Mrs. Rylands, however, who ever since Jack’s abrupt departure had noticed this change in the girl’s demeanor to herself, and with a woman’s intuitive insight of another woman, had fathomed it. The comfortable tete-a-tete with Jack, which Jane had looked forward to, Mrs. Rylands had anticipated herself, and then sent him off! When Joshua thanked his wife for remembering the pepper-sauce, and Mrs. Rylands pathetically admitted her forgetfulness, the head-toss which Jane gave as she left the room was too marked to be overlooked by him. Mrs. Rylands gave a hysterical little laugh. “I am afraid Jane doesn’t like my sending away the expressman just after I had also dismissed the stranger whom she had taken a fancy to, and left her without company,” she said unwisely.
Mr. Rylands did not laugh. “I reckon,” he returned slowly, “that Jane must feel kinder lonely; she bears all the burden of our bein’ outer the world, without any of our glory in the cause of it.”
Nevertheless, when supper was over, and the pair were seated in the sitting-room before the fire, this episode was forgotten. Mrs. Rylands produced her husband’s pipe and tobacco-pouch. He looked around the formal walls and hesitated. He had been in the habit of smoking in the kitchen.
“Why not here?” said Mrs. Rylands, with a sudden little note of decision. “Why should we keep this room only for company that don’t come? I call it silly.”
This struck Mr. Rylands as logical. Besides, undoubtedly the fire had mellowed the room. After a puff or two he looked at his wife musingly. “Couldn’t you make yourself one of them cigarettys, as they call ’em? Here’s the tobacco, and I’ll get you the paper.”
“I COULD,” she said tentatively. Then suddenly, “What made you think of it? You never saw ME smoke!”