The Tangled Threads Part 27

"Sarah!" exclaimed Caleb.

"Oh, here you are," cried Fred from the doorway. "Say, is it to-morrow we go?--just to-morrow? Why, we have n't done half that we wanted to!"

Behind him stood Ethel, her eyes wistful, her mouth drooping at the corners.

Sarah drew a quick breath.

"Ask--ask your father," she faltered.

"Sarah, would you?--would you come back? Do you mean it?" cried Caleb, with a swift joy in his eyes.

Sarah burst into tears, and threw herself into her husband's arms.

"Oh, Caleb, I--just would! I--I 've wanted to ever so long, but--I just would n't own up."

"There, there," soothed the man, with loving pats, his face alight, "we'll come back, so we will; we'll come back right away."

Ethel and Fred ran shouting from the summer-house, and Sarah raised a tear-stained face.

"Well, anyhow," she laughed softly, "now we can see just how high that rosebush does get!"

The Letter

Monday noon the postman gave the letter to twelve-year-old Emily, and Emily in turn handed it to her young brother. Between the gate and the door, however, Teddy encountered Rover, and Rover wanted to play. It ended in the letter disappearing around the corner of the house, being fast held in the jaws of a small black-and-tan dog.

Five minutes later the a.s.sembled family in the dining-room heard of the loss and demanded an explanation.

"'T wasn't t-ten minutes ago, mother," stammered Emily defensively.

"The postman handed it to me and I gave it to Teddy to bring in."

"But whose letter was it?" demanded several voices.

Emily shook her head.

"I don't know," she faltered.

"Don't know! Why, daughter, how could you be so careless?" cried Mrs.

Clayton. "It is probably that note from the Bixbys--they were to write if they could not come. But I should like to know what they said."

"But it might have been to me," cut in Ethel. (Ethel was pretty, eighteen, and admired.)

There was a sudden exclamation across the table as James, the first-born, pushed back his chair.

"Confound it, Emily, you've got us in a pretty mess! It so happened I was looking for a letter myself," he snapped, as he jerked himself to his feet. "See here, Teddy, where did that rascally little dog go to?

Come, let's go find Rover," he finished, stooping and lifting the small boy to his shoulder. The next moment the dining-room door had banged behind them.

"Dear, dear!" laughed Mrs. Clayton, a little hysterically, turning to her husband. "You don't happen to be expecting a letter, do you, Charles?"

"I do happen to be--and a very important one, too," returned the man; and Mrs. Clayton, after a nervous glance at his frowning face, subsided into her chair with a murmured word of regret. When luncheon was over she slipped from the room and joined in the hunt for Rover.

They scoured the yard, the street, the house, and the woodshed, finding the culprit at last in the barn asleep under the big automobile. Of the letter, however, there was not a trace.

"Dear, dear, if dogs only could talk!" moaned Mrs. Clayton that night as, restless and full of fancies, she lay on her bed. "If only I knew where and what that letter was. But then, of course, it's from the Bixbys; I'm going to think so, anyway," she comforted herself, and resolutely closed her eyes.

"If that _should_ be Dennison's letter," mused Mr. Clayton as he locked up the house; "if that should be--confound it, and I know it is! I 'd swear it! It serves me right, too, I suppose, for telling him to write me at the house instead of at the office. Confound that little beast of a dog!"

In the south chamber Ethel, sending long, even strokes over the brown satin of her hair, eyed her image in the gla.s.s with a plaintive pout.

"Now, if that letter _should_ be an invitation from Fred!" she said aloud. "And when I 'd so much rather go on that ride with him! Oh, dear! Where can Rover have put it?"

Across the hall James Clayton paced the room from end to end.

"Great Scott! What if it _were_ May's letter, after all?" he groaned.

"What a fool I was to leave it that if I did n't hear by Thursday night I'd understand 'twas 'no'! And now she may have written and be expecting me to-morrow, Wednesday,--_to-night_, even, and I not know it--tied hand and foot! Oh, hang that dog!"

Tuesday morning the family awoke and met at the breakfast table. The air was electric with unrest, and the food almost untouched. It was Mrs. Clayton who broke the long silence that followed the morning's greetings.

"I--I don't think I 'll do much to get ready for the Bixbys," she began; "I 'm so sure that letter was from them."

"You mean that, Julia?" demanded her husband, brightening. "Are you really positive?"

"Yes, really positive. They said all the time that they did n't think they could come, and that without doubt I should get a letter saying so."

"Then of course 'twas it," a.s.serted Ethel, her face suddenly clearing.

"Of course," echoed her brother with a prompt.i.tude that hinted at more than a willingness to be convinced that the letter was the Bixbys' and none other.

It was about ten minutes past five that afternoon when the four Bixbys came.

"There, we did get here!" they chorused gleefully.

"Yes, yes, I see, I see," murmured Mrs. Clayton, and signaled to Ethel to hurry into the kitchen and give the alarm to the cook. "Then you--you did n't write?"

"Write? Why, no, of course not! We were n't to, you know, if we could come."

"Yes--er--I mean no," stammered Mrs. Clayton, trying to calculate just how long it would take the maid to put three rooms in order.

At half-past six the family, with their guests, sat down to a dinner that showed unmistakable signs of having been started as a simple one for six, and finished as a would-be elaborate one for ten. To the faces of Mr. Clayton, Ethel, and James the cloud of the morning had returned. Mrs. Clayton, confident that the missing letter contained nothing worse for her than its absence had already brought her, looked comparatively serene.

After dinner, as by common consent, Mr. Clayton and his elder son and daughter met in a secluded comer of the library.

"Hang it all, dad, _now_ whose letter do you suppose that was?" began James aggressively.

"It's mine," groaned the father, with a shake of his head. "I know it's mine."

"But it might n't be," demurred Ethel, with a hesitation that showed a fear lest her suggestion meet with prompt acceptance.