Ellen had looked back at him as soberly.  “Mother says I ’ain’t,” she replied, “but—­”

“But what?”

“I am getting most as many new clothes as Aunt Eva, and she is.”

“And you think maybe you are gettin’ ready to be married, after all, hey?”

“I think maybe mother wants to surprise me,” Ellen said.

Jim Tenny had all of a sudden shaken convulsively as if with mirth, but his face remained perfectly sober.

That evening after the parlor door was closed upon Jim and Eva,
Ellen wondered what they were laughing at.

To-night when she saw Eva enter the room, a lighted lamp illuminating her face fairly reckless with happiness, to light the fire in the courting-stove as her sister facetiously called it, she thought to herself that Jim Tenny was coming, that they would be shut up in there all alone as usual, and then she looked out at the storm and the night again, and the little home picture thrown against it.  Then she saw her father coming into the yard with his arms full of parcels, and she was out of her chair and at the kitchen door to meet him.

Andrew had brought as usual some dainties for his darling.  He watched Ellen unwrap the various parcels, not smiling as usual, but with a curious knitting of his forehead and pitiful compression of mouth.  When she had finished and ran into the other room to show a great orange to her aunt, he drew a heavy sigh that was almost a groan.  His wife coming in from the kitchen with a dish heard him, and looked at him with quick anxiety, though she spoke in a merry, rallying way.

“For the land sake, Andrew Brewster, what be you groanin’ that way for?” she cried out.

Andrew’s tense face did not relax; he strove to push past her without a word, but Fanny stood before him.  “Now, look at here, Andrew,” said she, “you ‘ain’t goin’ to walk off with a face like that, unless I know what the matter is.  Are you sick?”

“No, I ain’t sick, Fanny,” Andrew said; then in a low voice, “Let me go, I will tell you by-and-by.”

“No, Andrew, you have got to tell me now.  I’m goin’ to know whatever has happened.”

“Wait till after supper, Fanny.”

“No, I can’t wait.  Look here, Andrew, you are my husband, and there ain’t no trouble that can come to you in this world that I can’t bear, except not knowin’.  You’ve got to tell me what the matter is.”

“Well, keep quiet till after supper, then,” said Andrew.  Then suddenly he leaned his face close to her and whispered with a hiss of tragedy, “Lloyd’s shut down.”

Fanny recoiled and looked at him.

“When?”

“The foreman gave notice to-night.”

“For how long?  Did he say?”

“Oh, till business got better—­same old story.  Unless I’m mistaken, Lloyd’s will be shut down all winter.”

“Well, it ain’t so bad for us as for some,” said Fanny.  Both pride and a wish to cheer her husband induced her to say that.  She did not like to think that, after the fine marriage she had made, she needed to be as distressed at a temporary loss of employment as others.  Then, too, that look of overhanging melancholy in Andrew’s face alarmed her; she felt that she must drive it away at any cost.