"Are you expecting Mrs. Cameron?" he asked, adding as Helen explained that she was coming to-morrow: "That is strange. Wilford wrote decidedly that he should be in New York to-morrow. Possibly, though, he does not intend himself to stop."
"I presume not," Helen replied, a weight suddenly lifting from her heart at the prospect of not having to entertain the formidable brother-in-law who, if he stayed long, would spoil all her pleasure.
Thus at her ease on this point, she grew more talkative, half wishing that her dress was not a shilling calico, or her hair combed back quite so straight, giving her that severe look which Morris had said was unbecoming. It was very smooth and glossy, and even Sybil Grandon would have given her best diamond to have had in her own natural right the long heavy coil of hair bound so many times around the back of Helen's head, ornamented with neither ribbon, comb, nor bow--only a single geranium leaf, with a white and scarlet blossom, was fastened just below the ear, and on the side where Mark could see it best, admiring its effect and forgetting the arrangement of the hair in his admiration of the well-shaped head, bending so industriously over the work which Helen had resumed--not crocheting, nor yet embroidery, but the very homely work of darning Uncle Ephraim's socks, a task which Helen always did, and on that particular night. Helen knew it was not delicate employment and there was a moment's hesitancy as she wondered what Mark would think--then with a grim delight in letting him see that she did not care, she resumed her darning needle, and as a kind of penance of the flash of pride in which she had indulged, selected from the basket the very coarsest, ugliest sock she could find, stretching out the huge fracture at the heel to its utmost extent, and attacking it with a right good will, while Mark, with a comical look on his face, sat watching her. She knew he was looking at her, and her cheeks were growing very red, while her hatred of him was increasing, when he said, abruptly: "You follow my mother's custom, I see. She used to mend my socks on Tuesday nights."
"Your mother mend socks!" and Helen started so suddenly as to run the point of her darning needle a long way into her thumb, the wound bringing a stream of blood which she tried to wipe away with her handkerchief.