wake and call you, and that would make matters worse. It's beginning to
drizzle, or I should stay out in the air. Oh! I wonder if father's mind
is going, and if this is the beginning of the end! If he is in his sober
senses, he could not be so strange, so suspicious, so unjust."

"He could be anything, say anything, do anything," exclaimed Patty.
"Perhaps he is not responsible and perhaps he is; it doesn't make much
difference to us. Come along, blessed darling! I'll tuck you in, and
then I'll creep back to the house, if you say I must. I'll go down and
make the kitchen fire in the morning; you stay out here and see what
happens. A good deal will happen, I'm thinking, if father speaks to
me of you! I shouldn't be surprised to see the fur flying in all
directions; I'll seize the first moment to bring you out a cup of coffee
and we'll consult about what to do. I may tell you now, I'm all for
running away!"

Waitstill's first burst of wretchedness had subsided and she had
recovered her balance. "I'm afraid we must wait a little longer, Patty,"
she advised. "Don't mention my name to father, but see how he acts in
the morning. He was so wild, so unlike himself, that I almost hope he
may forget what he said and sleep it off. Yes, we must just wait."

"No doubt he'll be far calmer in the morning if he remembers that, if he
turns you out, he faces the prospect of three meals a day cooked by me,"
said Patty. "That's what he thinks he would face, but as a matter of
fact I shall tell him that where you sleep I sleep, and where you eat
I eat, and when you stop cooking I stop! He won't part with two unpaid
servants in a hurry, not at the beginning of haying." And Patty, giving
Waitstill a last hug and a dozen tearful kisses, stole reluctantly back
to the house by the same route through which he had left it.

Patty was right. She found the fire lighted when she went down into the
kitchen next morning, and without a word she hurried breakfast on to the
table as fast as she could cook and serve it. Waitstill was safe in the
barn chamber, she knew, and would be there quietly while her father was
feeding the horse and milking the cows; or perhaps she might go up in
the woods and wait until she saw him driving away.

The Deacon ate his breakfast in silence, looking and acting very much
as usual, for he was generally dumb at meals. When he left the house,
however, and climbed into the wagon, he turned around and said in his
ordinary