It had not
escaped Mrs. Rylands, however, who ever since Jack's abrupt departure
had noticed this change in the girl's demeanor to herself, and with
a woman's intuitive insight of another woman, had fathomed it. The
comfortable tete-a-tete with Jack, which Jane had looked forward to,
Mrs. Rylands had anticipated herself, and then sent him off! When Joshua
thanked his wife for remembering the pepper-sauce, and Mrs. Rylands
pathetically admitted her forgetfulness, the head-toss which Jane
gave as she left the room was too marked to be overlooked by him. Mrs.
Rylands gave a hysterical little laugh. "I am afraid Jane doesn't like
my sending away the expressman just after I had also dismissed the
stranger whom she had taken a fancy to, and left her without company,"
she said unwisely.
Mr. Rylands did not laugh. "I reckon," he returned slowly, "that Jane
must feel kinder lonely; she bears all the burden of our bein' outer the
world, without any of our glory in the cause of it.
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