Chapter 2

“But Isabel said right out she’d go with her, and Jim agreed that it was
her duty, though it was mighty hard on him. When they went away they
didn’t think she’d be away more’n a year; but here it’s been five years.
This spring Miss Bartlett up and married an old widower she’d met out
there—no waiting for _her_ once he came to time—and poor Isabel was
free at last. That was the news Jim got last night—that and the fact
that she was coming home to him. She’s to be here in September—and I
s’pose Jim’ll spend the summer hunting up a house for her and talking
the ears off his cat. He’s _got_ to talk to some one about her, and the
cat’s the only creature that’s willing to listen for hours on end.”

“I hope he’ll find his house,” said Margaret, dreamily.

* * * * *

“I don’t know why on earth Jim has such a spite against the Ormsby
house. He seems to hate it as if it was a prison. And it’s such a nice
house. Perhaps it’s a little fussy on the outside—I think myself a bay
window or two could be spared. But it’s so convenient! Hot and cold
water, electric light, hardwood floors, two bathrooms—why, it’s equal
to a city apartment. And so near everything—shops and churches and the
park. Cassell Street’s the liveliest in Glenby—there’s a string of
motors passing all the time on the way to the lake. Perhaps the price
staggers Jim—but he has money saved up, and Ormsby would sell it for
half its value to settle up the estate.”

“I don’t think the Ormsby house belongs to Jim,” said Margaret.

Mrs. Kennedy stared.

“No, of course it don’t belong to him. It is part of the old Ormsby
estate.”

“It might belong to him for all that,” said Margaret. “Have you never
seen houses that you felt belonged to you—no matter who owned them?”

No, Mrs. Kennedy had not, nor had she a glimmer of a notion what Miss
Irwin meant. So she got up and began to clear away the dishes and
Margaret went out to the garden and lay in a hammock under the trees,
doing nothing.

Oh, how sweet it was to do nothing, in the beautiful silence! Margaret
had been working in a department store for twelve years, and she hated
it. She always felt that she was in the grip of an octopus that was
slowly devouring her, and would never let her go as long as there was a
bone left to crack. She had two weeks’ vacation once a year, and had to
spend it on a lonely farm with the grouchy old uncle and aunt who had
brought her up and who expected her to work hard at weeding and milking
and pie-baking, all her little two weeks.

* * * * *

She always felt more tired when she went back to work than when she
had left it. But she had never rebelled. There was nothing of the
revolutionary in her. She was a little brown thing; her dark brown eyes
were too soft and shadowy to be black, and apart from her eyes she was
neither pretty nor ugly—just insignificant. She had had two chances of
marriage; but though in the abstract she had thought she would marry
_anybody_ who would take her out of that horrible transfer and change
department, when it came to the concrete she found she couldn’t do it.
Nobody would ever marry her now—she must go on at her counter and her
little wicket forever and ever and ever, until she got too old to work.

Her uncle and aunt had died in the winter. Margaret was not very
sorry—and she did not blame herself because she wasn’t. They had always
been tyrants—cruel, selfish tyrants. She was too gentle and sweet to
hate any one, or she would have hated them. They did not leave her
anything—everything went to their own daughter. But Margaret had an
odd, stifled feeling of freedom. She would have a _real_ vacation—the
first she had ever had.

It was to be a longer vacation than she had counted on, for she felt so
miserable in the spring she was obliged to go to a doctor. He told her
that she must take three months off or a worse thing would befall her.
Margaret didn’t see how she could—and then she suddenly made up her
mind to do it, even if she lost her place. But the manager of the
transfer department became human for five minutes, and told her he would
keep her place for her, so she decided to make one wild, reckless
plunge. She would take enough of her small savings and find a nice
boarding house in some quiet place where there was no _noise_, and no
abominable cabbagy smells. Oh, to be where there was no noise!

* * * * *

For the transfer and change department, in the middle of the big
hardware basement, was the noisiest place in the great hive. There were
all kinds of noises—ceaseless, meaningless noises that hammered on her
tired brain and numbed her soul. The other girls in the transfer got
used to the noises—never noticed them, so they said. Margaret didn’t
believe them—it seemed so impossible to her. But now, for the whole
golden, blissful summer she was going to forget them.

Jim did not come home to dinner. Somehow it seemed a rather flat meal.
But he was there at supper time, radiating triumph.

“I told you it was my lucky day,” he said. “I’ve found my house—and
bought it—paid cash down for it before Jack Petersen could change his
mind. I wouldn’t take any risks on that house. It’s mine—mine this
blessed minute. Why, it’s such good luck as to be almost uncanny.”

“Jack Petersen?” said Mrs. Kennedy. “You don’t mean to say——”

“I do. I mean to say it all. I’ve bought Jack’s house—or rather the
house he owned by a legal quibble. It’s always been really _my_ house,
you know—built for me—predestined for me. But I had no hope of ever
getting my own. I thought he wanted it for himself and _his_ bride. I
couldn’t believe any man who owned that house could dream of selling it.
And to-day has literally flung it into my hands.”

* * * * *

“That little Petersen house!” said Mrs. Kennedy, aghast. “Why—it’s
old—and shabby—and so small, and out of the world!”

“You’ve said it! It’s most gloriously out of the world. That’s one
reason I love it. And it is old and shabby—that’s why I can afford it.
I’m going to fix it up—I’ve got two months to work at it. I mean to do
everything with my own hands.”

“Do you think Isabel will like to live away up in that lonely place?”
demanded Mrs. Kennedy.

Jim looked at Margaret and smiled. “Do _you_ think she will?” he asked.

“She can’t help it,” said Margaret.

Mrs. Kennedy snorted.

“Well, I suppose it’s no use saying anything——”

“Not a bit. The fatal deed is done. I, Jim Kennedy, am a landed
proprietor, owning a house, a garden and a spruce wood an acre in
extent—I, who this morning hadn’t a square inch of this big earth to
call my own. Friend Cat, be excited for once, I implore you—that’s a
duck of a cat.”