CHAPTER IV

Disaster


Shortly after Mrs. Day had left her husband sitting in his stocking-feet
over the breakfast-room fire, she, in the midst of her children at their
several occupations but attentive to what went on beyond, heard his heavy
step in the hall, heard the front door open and close.

"Your father has gone to the club, after all," she said, and gave a sigh of
relief as she worked away at her embroidery, making holes in a strip of
muslin and stitching round them, for the adornment of the elder daughter's
petticoat. She was a timid woman, in spite of her fine and handsome
appearance, with a great fear of the unusual. It was her husband's habit to
go out. The thought of him sitting alone and idle in the other room had
been weighing on her mind.

The children paid no attention; they were all a little tired and languid
and disinclined for their usual amusements after the excitement of last
night's dance and the exertion of their morning on the ice. Even Deleah,
the reader of the family, neglected her book to lie back in her chair and
gaze into the fire, the music of galop, and rattle of her father's
tambourine humming in her ears; before her eyes figures chasing each other
over the blue sheet of ice or flying rhythmically over polished boards.

Franky having temporarily deserted his paint-box and the _Illustrated News_
he had designed to colour for many tinted sheets of gelatine, saved from
the crackers on last night's supper table, now held them in turn before his
eyes. "Mama, you're all red--all lovely red, like roses," or "Bessie,