The Unbidden Guest. Hornung Ernest William

      “So you’ve got back, father?” she was saying presently, in an absent, mechanical sort of voice.

      “Here I am,” said Mr. Teesdale; “and I left Missy at the theatre, where it appears she had to meet – ”

      “Missy!” exclaimed Arabella, remembering very suddenly. “Oh yes! Of course. Where do you say you left her, father?”

      “At the Bijou Theatre, my dear, I am sorry to say; but it wasn’t her fault; it was the friends she is staying with whom she had to meet there. Well, let’s hope it won’t do her any harm just once in a way. And what have you been doing, my dear, all the evening?”

      “I? Oh, after milking I had a bit of a stroll outside.”

      “A stroll, eh? Then you didn’t happen to see a man hanging about our slip-rails, did you?”

      Mr. Teesdale was emptying his pockets, with his back to Arabella, so he never knew how his question affected her.

      “I wasn’t near the slip-rails, I was in the opposite direction,” she said presently. “Why do you ask?”

      “Because I found this right under them,” said Mr. Teesdale, showing her the meerschaum pipe before laying it down on the chimney-piece; “and as I was getting near the township, I met a man who told me he’d lost just such a pipe. And I didn’t like him, my dear, so I only hope he’s not coming after our Mary Jane, that’s all.”

      Mary Jane was the farm-servant. She had not been out of the kitchen since milking-time, said Arabella; and her father was remarking that he was glad to hear this, when the door flew open, and Mrs. Teesdale whistled into the room like a squall of wind.

      “At last!” she cried. “Do you know how long you’ve been, David? Do you know what time it is?”

      “I don’t, my dear,” said he.

      “Then look at your watch.”

      “My dear,” he said, “I’ve left my watch in Melbourne.”

      “In Melbourne!” cried Mrs. Teesdale among her top notes. “And what’s the meaning of that?”

      “It means,” said Mr. Teesdale, struggling to avoid the lie direct, “that it hasn’t been cleaned for years, and that it needed cleaning very badly indeed.”

      “But you told Miriam how well it was going; time we were having our teas!”

      “Yes, I know, and – that’s the curious thing, my dear. It went and stopped on our way in.” For there was no avoiding it, after all; yet in all the long years of their married life, it was his first.

      CHAPTER VI. – THE WAYS OF SOCIETY

      The Monday following was the first and the best of some bad days at the farm; for Missy had never written to tell Mr. Teesdale when and where he might call for her, so he could not call at all, and she did not come out by herself. This they now firmly expected her to do, and David wasted much time in meeting every omnibus; but when the last one had come in without Missy, even he was forced to give her up for that day. There would be a letter of explanation in the morning, said David, and shut his ears to his wife’s answer. She had been on tenter-hooks all day, for ever diving into the spare room with a duster, dodging out again to inquire what time it was now, and then scolding David because he had not his watch – a circumstance for which that simpleton was reproaching himself before long.

      For there was no letter in the morning, and no Missy next day, or the next, or the next after that. It was then that Mr. Teesdale took to lying awake and thinking much of the friendly ticking that had cheered his wakefulness for thirty years, and even more of a few words in the Thursday’s Argus, which he had not shown to a soul. And strange ideas concerning the English girl were bandied across the family board; but the strangest of all were John William’s, who would not hear a word against her; on the contrary, it was his father, in his opinion, who was to blame for the whole matter, which the son of the house declared to be a mere confusion of one Monday with another.