CHAPTER XXVIII
A LETTER FROM THE MASTER
Four days had passed since Nancy had written her confession and sent it off to Peter Hyde. They had seemed endless, too, in spite of all the strange changes at Happy House. Aunt Sabrina and Aunt Milly were pathetically and helplessly busy over the new member of the family, and his coming had necessitated momentous reforms in the habits of the household and long arguments as to the proper care of infants. B'lindy had finally found somewhere in the back of a "Household Helper" a chapter on the "Care of the Child," and went about all day with a finger between its pages and a superior look on her face.
Nancy had spent one entire afternoon at the Hopworth's. Nonie and Davy had come for her and had dragged her back with them to see their "Dad."
"Ask him to tell you 'bout——" and Davy had breathlessly, rattled off a dozen or more of the war tales that he had liked best.
Nancy had thought, that afternoon, that, somehow or other, the Hopworth kitchen had changed since that first day she had visited it. It was cleaner, homier; there was less litter, the air was not so heavy with the stale odors of cooking. Old Dan'l sat near the open door smoking the pipe Eric had brought him, his eyes following Eric's every movement. Liz, fussing about over household tasks, was less dominant, less forbidding, and the tired look had gone from her face.
With the children's chatter Eric Hopworth's shyness soon wore off. Nonie had told him of the pleasant days at Happy House with Nancy; he felt a deep gratitude to these people who had been doing for his two "kiddies" what he should have done. At Davy's coaxing he had repeated for Nancy some of the incidents of the war in which he had shared. Davy had proudly exhibited the precious trophies that had come home in his father's luggage.
"And Dad's going to stay home always and always now," Nonie had announced. Then Eric Hopworth explained that he had taken a position in a big manufacturing plant at Burlington.
"The boss there was my captain. It'll do for a start. After a bit, maybe, I can take the family there, though Pa'll likely want to always stay here in Freedom," he had added with a squaring of the shoulders that said plainly that the burdens of the household now rested upon him.