“Yes, after a while.  Are you sick, papa?”

“No, dear.  Why?”

“Because you did not go on the other train.”

“No, dear, I am all right, just a little tired,” replied Harry.  Then he added, looking solicitously at Maria, “Are you sure you feel able to go to school to-day?—­because you need not, you know.”

“I am all right,” said Maria.

She and her father had seated themselves at the table.  Harry looked at his watch.

“We shall neither of us go if we don’t get our breakfast before long,” he said.

Then Hannah came in, with a lowering look, bringing the coffee-pot and the chops and rolls.

“Where is Annie?” asked Harry.

“I don’t know,” replied Hannah, with a toss of her head and a compression of her lips.  She was a large, solid woman, with a cast in her eyes.  She had never been married.

“You don’t know?” said Harry, helping Maria to a chop and a roll, while Hannah poured the coffee.

“No,” said Hannah again, and this time her face was fairly malicious.  “I don’t know how long I can stand such doin’s, and that’s the truth,” she said.

Hannah had come originally from New England, and had principles, in which she took pride, perhaps the more because they had never in one sense been assailed.  Annie was a Hungarian, and considered by Hannah to have no principles.  She was also pretty, in a rough, half-finished sort of fashion, and had no cast in her eyes.  Hannah privately considered that as against her.

Harry began sipping his coffee, which Hannah had set down with such impetus that she spilled a good deal in the saucer, and he looked uneasily at her.

“What do you mean, Hannah?” he asked.

“I mean that I am not used to being throwed in with girls who stays out all night, and nobody knows where they be, and that’s the truth,” said Hannah, with emphasis.

“Do you mean to say that Annie—­”

“Yes, I do.  She wa’n’t in, and they do say she’s married, and—­”

“Hush, Hannah, we’ll talk about this another time,” Harry said, with a glance at Maria.

Just then a step was heard in the kitchen.

“There she is now, the trollop,” said Hannah, but she whispered the last word under her breath, and she also gave a glance at Maria, as one might at any innocent ignorance which must be shielded even from knowledge itself.

Annie came in directly.  Her pretty, light hair was nicely arranged; she was smiling, but she looked doubtful.

Hannah went with a flounce into the kitchen.  Annie had removed her hat and coat and tied on a white apron in a second, and she began waiting exactly as if she had come down the back stairs after a night spent in her own room.  Indeed, she did not dream that either Harry or Maria knew that she had not, and she felt quite sure of Hannah’s ignorance, since Hannah herself had been away all night.