Mrs Days Daughters | Page 6

to sleep.
CHAPTER II
Something Wrong At The Office
Mrs. Day had decided to spend the first morning of the New Year in superintending the relaying of the drawing-room carpet and the reducing her house to its habitual order after the dance. Bessie had decided otherwise. She had decided that she should be driven in the carriage, her mother beside her, to some flooded and frozen meadows, three miles out of the town, where many of the young people who had danced last night had arranged to go to skate. Deleah and the boys had started to walk there immediately after breakfast. Bessie, who could not skate, wished to be there also, but did not choose to walk, and could not be allowed to be in the carriage alone.
The girl, very fair and pretty in her velvet jacket with the ermine collar and cuffs, seated in the victoria by her mother's side, eagerly scanned the broad expanse of ice for the familiar figure of the young man who had paid her such particular attention during the memorable galop. She looked in vain. There were several of last night's partners who came to the side of the carriage and asked for the ladies' health after the fatigue of the dance, and descanted on their own freedom, or otherwise, from weariness. Deleah, her face the colour of a wild rose, her loose dark hair curling crisply in the frosty air, shouted greetings to her mother as she flew past, a little erect, graceful figure keeping her elegant poise with the ease of the young and fearless. Now and again she was seen to be fleeing, laughing as she went, from the pursuit of a skater who wished to make a circuit of the flooded meadow holding Deleah's hand. The girl was at once a romp and shy. She laughed with dancing eyes as she flew ahead; but captured, had a frightened, anxious look, her eyes appealing to her mother as she passed in protest and for protection.
"Deleah will be a flirt when she grows up," Bessie said, who knew that her mother was regarding the pretty child with admiration.
"Do you think so, my dear? I hope not, Bessie."
"She will! And she wants looking after. I thought, for a girl not yet 'out,' she was very forward last night. Reggie thought so too."
"I'm afraid you put it into his head, Bessie."
"As if Reggie had not got ideas of his own! Without my even so much as hinting he said he supposed she knew she was pretty."
"Reggie isn't here to-day, Bessie."
"I think he will come. He said he would come, and as I could not skate he promised to push me in a chair on the ice. We need not go home yet, mama. I like watching the skating."
But she only watched the arrivals; and Reggie Forcus was never among them.
"Perhaps he's gone to speak to papa," she said brightly after a silence." No doubt he thought, after all, it would be better to get things settled. I expect that is what Reggie has done, mama."
"I would not think so much about it, if I were you, my dear. Wait until matters have arranged themselves."
"Yes, but ought not we to do something to arrange them?" Bessie persisted.
"It is not usual, Bessie."
"But, mama, am I to lose Reggie for any nonsense of that sort? Usual or not usual I think you or papa should speak to him."
To pacify her the mother admitted that her father had even thought of doing so.
"Then I hope papa will have the sense to do it; and to get the whole thing settled," Bessie said.
She awaited in feverish expectancy the return of her father from his office, that evening, welcoming him with bright eyes and eager looks, trying to read in his face that which she longed to hear from his lips. But Mr. Day had arrived home in a temper of mind the reverse of encouraging. In gloomy silence he sat through the meal which families of the upper middle classes then took instead of dinner at the dinner hour. A comfortable, informal meal at which a big silver tea-tray and great silver tea-urn and heavily embossed tea-services, took a prominent part; where rolls and patties and huge hams and much-decorated tongues were present; and hot toast and muffins and many cakes. No servants waited; there was no centre-piece of flowers; but the gas from the many branches of the great chandelier of scintillating cut glass overhead shone on the silver and china and the appetising viands to which the Days always did such ample justice in a very agreeable way.
But to-night the master of the house, seated opposite his wife at her tea-tray, ate nothing of the generous fare. He had a black look on his heavy face, and short snarling