Elihu drew the long breath which is the due of happily completed toil.
He began to roll up his plans. Amarita ran to him and looked over his shoulder.
"You got "em done?" she asked.
The red in her cheeks had heightened. Her voice came huskily. Old Mis"
Meade glanced at her, a sharp and quick survey. Elihu indulgently unrolled his paper and spread it on the desk.
"Yes," said he, "I got "em done."
"O Elihu!" breathed his wife. She bent above the page, and in the fever of her interest seemed to pounce on it and scurry over it. "You goin" to show it to the town meetin"?"
"Course I be," said Elihu, with a modest pride. "That"s what I made it for."
Amarita straightened.
"Well," said she. Her voice was hard through what might have been an accepted purpose. "You may as well shave you. We"ll have supper early."
Supper was a silent meal that night. Elihu was pondering on his triumph as a valuable citizen, and what Amarita thought no one could at that moment have foretold. She did not eat, but she drank her tea in hasty swallows, and burned her mouth with it. That, the old lady guessed, was why the tears came once or twice into her eyes. Amarita, her mother-in-law judged, had been staying indoors too much through the snowy weather, while Elihu worked on his plans. There had been no sleigh-rides, only the necessary driving to the street.
Old Mis" Meade had a little scheme in view, and now she brought it forth; it was a species of compensation for stay-at-homes during the absence of their lawful head for his two or three hours of civic duty.
"What if you should bring in a good big knot "fore you go," she adjured him, "an" Rita "n" I"ll have us a fire in the fireplace. I dunno why, but seems if I didn"t want to set in the kitchen to-night. Then by the time you come home there"ll be a good bed o" coals, an" you can toast your feet "fore you go to bed."
There was a whirling half-hour of preparation, while old Mis" Meade washed the supper dishes and Amarita flew light-footedly about from kitchen to bedroom to get her lord into his public clothes. Elihu forgot the knot, and brought it in after he had a.s.sumed the garb of ceremony; and then he had to be fussily brushed from possible sawdust, while Amarita, an anxious frown on her brow, wondered why mother Meade always would distract him at the most important points. The fire was laid, but Elihu was one of those who believe in their own personal magic over a blaze, and he had to adjust the knot and touch off the kindling and watch the result a minute, to be sure the chimney had not caught. By the time he had harnessed and had appeared again to wash his hands and don his greatcoat, two other sleighs had gone by, bearing town fathers to the trysting-place. Amarita was nervous. She knew Elihu liked to be beforehand with his duties. But at last, his roll of plans in hand, he was proceeding down the path, slipping a little, for the thaw had made it treacherous, to the gate where the horse was. .h.i.tched, and Amarita, at the sitting-room window, watched him. Old Mis" Meade came up behind her, and she too watched.
Elihu was uncovering the horse. Amarita turned from her mother-in-law with a noiseless rush and flew out of the front door and down the slippery path.
"Elihu!" she called, with all the voice excitement left her. "Elihu, you come here. I"ve got to speak to you."
Elihu left the horse and came with long strides up the path, taking, as he hurried, glances at the roof.
"Roarin", is it?" he asked. "You think the chimbley"s ketched?"
The roll of plans stuck out from his coat pocket. That was all Amarita could see. She laid hands upon him and drew him into the entry. There she shut the door and then stood with her grasp upon the other door, leading into the sitting-room, and held it tight. She was afraid mother Meade might come out to see what was the matter. Amarita leaned against the casing. In spite of the brightness of her eyes, she looked faint and sick. It seemed to be her grasp upon the latch that kept her now from falling.
"O Elihu!" she said. He was questioning her with puzzled eyes. "O Elihu!
I"ve been awful mean to you." Her hold on the latch relaxed, and she sat down on the packing-case between them. "When I told you about the box the man left, and you seemed to think I didn"t know enough to come in when it rained, I said next time you made any kind of a mistake I"d let it go, no matter who"s goin" to laugh at you. And when it come to your plans"--she stopped here, and Elihu absently put his hand to the roll in his pocket--"when it come to them, I said you might show "em to the minister and the doctor and everybody else. But, Elihu, there ain"t--O Elihu, you ain"t put a single closet in that house!"
Elihu stood there in silence, and Amarita sat on the packing-case, feeling her heart beat. It seemed a long time before she heard his voice.
"There! there!" he was saying. "You open that door and I"ll look in an"
see if the chimbley"s ketched."
In a moment Amarita followed him. She heard mother Meade moving about the kitchen, and Elihu was just dropping his roll of paper on the fire.
She gave a little cry, but he only said, in what seemed to her a very kind voice, almost the voice of courting days,--
"You run out and fetch me in the hammer and screw-driver, whilst I listen to this chimbley."
When she came droopingly back with the tools, Elihu was explicitly cheerful.
"There!" he said. "That"s safe enough. We"ll burn it out, come wet weather." Then he strode into the hall, and she heard two or three blows and the splintering of soft wood. "Here"s your books," Elihu was calling to her. "You two take "em out, and if "tain"t too late after I come home, I"ll read a page. I guess we can foot the bill when it comes in."