But a few minutes after that, when her husband suddenly asked her a question, Mrs. Bunting answered at random.  It was clear she had not heard the last few words he had been saying.

“A penny for your thoughts!” he said jocularly.  But she shook her head.

Daisy slipped out of the room, and, five minutes later, came back dressed up in a blue-and-white check silk gown.

“My!” said her father.  “You do look fine, Daisy.  I’ve never seen you wearing that before.”

“And a rare figure of fun she looks in it!” observed Mrs. Bunting sarcastically.  And then, “I suppose this dressing up means that you’re expecting someone.  I should have thought both of you must have seen enough of young Chandler for one day.  I wonder when that young chap does his work—­that I do!  He never seems too busy to come and waste an hour or two here.”

But that was the only nasty thing Ellen said all that evening.  And even Daisy noticed that her stepmother seemed dazed and unlike herself.  She went about her cooking and the various little things she had to do even more silently than was her wont.

Yet under that still, almost sullen, manner, how fierce was the storm of dread, of sombre anguish, and, yes, of sick suspense, which shook her soul, and which so far affected her poor, ailing body that often she felt as if she could not force herself to accomplish her simple round of daily work.

After they had finished supper Bunting went out and bought a penny evening paper, but as he came in he announced, with a rather rueful smile, that he had read so much of that nasty little print this last week or two that his eyes hurt him.

“Let me read aloud a bit to you, father,” said Daisy eagerly, and he handed her the paper.

Scarcely had Daisy opened her lips when a loud ring and a knock echoed through the house.

CHAPTER XI

It was only Joe.  Somehow, even Bunting called him “Joe” now, and no longer “Chandler,” as he had mostly used to do.

Mrs. Bunting had opened the front door only a very little way.  She wasn’t going to have any strangers pushing in past her.

To her sharpened, suffering senses her house had become a citadel which must be defended; aye, even if the besiegers were a mighty horde with right on their side.  And she was always expecting that first single spy who would herald the battalion against whom her only weapon would be her woman’s wit and cunning.

But when she saw who stood there smiling at her, the muscles of her face relaxed, and it lost the tense, anxious, almost agonised look it assumed the moment she turned her back on her husband and stepdaughter.

“Why, Joe,” she whispered, for she had left the door open behind her, and Daisy had already begun to read aloud, as her father had bidden her.  “Come in, do!  It’s fairly cold to-night.”

A glance at his face had shown her that there was no fresh news.