Jenny’s glance fell upon the trimmed hat which lay upon the table.  Nothing but a cry from her father could have prevented her from taking it up and setting it upon her head.  The act was her defiance.  She was determined.  As one deaf and blind, she went out of the kitchen, and to the hall-stand, fumbling there for her hatpins.  She pinned her hat as deliberately as she might have done in leaving the house any morning.  Her pale face was set.  She had flung the gage.  There remained only the acts consequential.  And of those, since they lay behind the veil of night, who could now speak?  Not Jenny!

iv

There was still Pa.  He was there like a secret, lying snug in his warm bed, drowsily coaxing sleep while Jenny planned a desertion.  Even when she was in the room, her chin grimly set and her lips quivering, a shudder seemed to still her heart.  She was afraid.  She could not forget him.  He lay there so quiet in the semi-darkness, a long mound under the bedclothes; and she was almost terrified at speaking to him because her imagination was heightened by the sight of his dim outline.  He was so helpless!  Ah, if there had only been two Jennies, one to go, one to stay.  The force of uncontrollable desire grappled with her pity.  She still argued within herself, a weary echo of her earlier struggle.  He would need nothing, she was sure.  It would be for such a short time that she left him.  He would hardly know she was not there.  He would think she was in the kitchen.  But if he needed her?  If he called, if he knocked with his stick, and she did not come, he might be alarmed, or stubborn, and might try to find his way through the passage to the kitchen.  If he fell!  Her flesh crept as she imagined him helpless upon the floor, feebly struggling to rise....  It was of no use.  She was bound to tell him....

Jenny moved swiftly from the room, and returned with his nightly glass and jug of water.  There could be nothing else that he would want during the night.  It was all he ever had, and he would sleep so until morning.  She approached the bed upon tiptoe.

“Pa,” she whispered.  “Are you awake?” He stirred, and looked out from the bedclothes, and she was fain to bend over him and kiss the tumbled hair.  “Pa, dear ...  I want to go out.  I’ve got to go out.  Will you be all right if I leave you?  Sure?  You’ll be a good boy, and not move!  I shall be back before Emmy, and you won’t be lonely, or frightened—­will you!” She exhorted him.  “See, I’ve got to go out; and if I can’t leave you....  You are awake, Pa?”

“Yes,” breathed Pa, half asleep.  “A good boy.  Night, Jenny, my dearie girl.”