"Oh, very well!" said Tom huffily, and walked out of the room.
It seemed to Alice as if she were swept by chill wind. An awful sense of separation between her and those she loved enveloped her. Her second feeling was as though she had lost Tom forever. She was surprised to feel a hot drop on her hand and realized that she was crying.
Time dragged on. There was not a sound in the house.
Alice set her teeth. Whatever happened, Tom Marcey must come back to her of his own accord. Right or wrong she was not going to throw overboard all the traditions of women that had made life tenable in a difficult world, and go running after him.
Her treacherous heart suggested that orders were to be given to Laurie, that she wanted a book that was downstairs. She set herself sternly to the task of staying in her room.
She wanted to make up with Tom. She wanted to put things straight. She wanted to make up with him for the things she had thought about him and which she hadn't spoken. Off by herself, with Tom staying huffily downstairs, she knew that he was alienated from her not only by the question of Jamie's cart. What Tom was angry about was that Alice Marcey had acted as if the children were her children and her children alone. And since he was trying just as hard as she to progress along the stages of Parents Progress, he resented her unspoken superiority.
Another and deeper anguish began to grip her heart.
The children had not returned.
It is only too obvious to a mother, especially if she has let her nerves go, that if her children are a moment late, something has happened to them. This something is always lurking outside and dogging their every footstep every time they are out of her sight. Every motor-
