Page:The Star in the Window.pdf/175

Rh day she might use against Aunt Augusta, pressing against her chest underneath her waist.

Nathan, far away in his boat, plowing steadily along now toward tropical seas, need not have sighed with such frequent hopelessness over his unfitness for the dainty little silk-gowned person who had stooped to marry him, had he known to what advantage he appeared in her home atmosphere. He did not suffer in comparison with the only man with whom Reba came into close contact—her father. For David, distressed over the fast-approaching catastrophe of the all-important Augusta's departure, expressed his disgruntledness in the frequent donning of frayed and worn wearing-apparel, and soiled collars (or else, during meal-time, no collars at all), and constantly ate with his knife and snapped at his food. Nathaniel Cawthorne seemed to Reba made of finer material than her father, and his manners, beside David's, stood out as actually courtly.

Reba kept her marriage guarded very carefully. Nobody guessed, nobody surmised it, but the secret knowledge of it instilled marvelous self-confidence. In her first issue with her father, after Aunt Augusta and Aunt Emma had departed for Maine, it was the constant repetition to herself of the words, "I'm Mrs. Cawthorne! I'm Mrs. Cawthorne!" that kept her from crumpling up and submitting.

The issue had been about a hired-girl. Reba had gone to Union one afternoon, before her aunts had left, and engaged a young Swede to come and help her with the housework. She did not tell her father what she had done until the day Hedwig was due to arrive.

"I'm going to pay her wages," she explained.