The Able McLaughlins by Margaret Wilson (small books to read .TXT) 📕

was as empty as the house. Dod made a fire in the fireplace, and put the kettle on. Then the father made a discovery that the son had made some time ago. The cupboard was bare. Not a bite in it. Not a crumb of cake.

McNair didn’t like that. She might have told them where she was going. She ought to have come back in time to have the supper ready. He hated a cold house. He went to his tobacco box. At least that was always ready for a hungry man. He opened it, and found a strange white paper in it. A note from his wife. A fine note! “I can’t live in a sty,” it said. “I have gone back to Scotland. Jeannie is with Chirstie. Barbara Ferguson.”

Back to Scotland!

A woman alone!

Starting away with his team! She was daft! He rushed into the bedroom, as soon as he began to realize her meaning. Were her hat and cloak there? They were not! What was this? The kists not one on top of the other, as usual! Spreading all over the room! And empty! Nothing left in them! He rushed to the kitchen. The kist that set there was empty, too, more empty if possible than the others! He sat down.

He was outraged. He was speechless. That woman hadn’t been able to lift those boxes alone into the wagon, so she had taken all their contents and left them. Such cunning! Such deceit! And had he not paid all her passage from Scotland! She had left him! Left him, Alex McNair! Without saying a word! Her so quiet, and all! The whole clan would know all about it! They would all have seen her passing! A woman alone! Had anyone ever before heard of such a thing? Certainly not in those parts! Everybody wondering where his wife was off to! Oh, Jeannie would never have played him so base a trick!

Dod came into the room. McNair stuffed the note hastily into the box.

“Your mother has gone to town,” he murmured, meekly.

Dod heard that with surprise. Presently he volunteered that he saw now why she had wanted to learn how to hitch up the horses. Had she indeed learned all that from him? his father gasped. Oh, the depth of deceit in her! And he had paid her way from Glasgow! Dod made disconsolate cornmeal for their supper, forgetting to put salt in it. To think of that woman ridding the cupboard of its last crumb! McNair went to the barn and pretended to work, after the meal, being too excited to sit still. Back to Scotland! Had ever anyone heard the like! Everyone would be laughing at him. A rich wife, indeed! Oh, he understood now why the canny widowers of Scotland had meekly let him take this jewel of a woman away to America. They must have known her!

There was but one thing to be done. He would rise early, long before dawn, and pursue her, getting out of the neighborhood before anyone would be awake to see him pass. Her with his good horses in the town, not knowing enough, maybe, to give them a drink at the end of the journey! If she ever imagined he would give her a cent to get back with, how greatly mistaken she was. He would surely show her who was master here.

He found her the next afternoon, in the hall of one of those long, shanty-like hotels which comprised the town, found her in the very act of making a bargain with a man to make her new boxes to take the place of those she had so extravagantly abandoned. They faced each other in her room, he, tall, gaunt, black-eyed, ragged, she, small, dainty, red-haired, bedecked. Her placidness, as usual, disarmed him. He began;

“You can’t go back to Scotland! Are you daft?”

“I canna’ live in a sty.”

They were off, then. He urged decency, morality, economy, honesty, pride, race, the waning reputation of Glasgow. After each argument she simply said, like one born foolish;

“I canna’ live in a sty.”

It was a deadlock, till he demanded angrily where she expected to get money for the journey. At her answer he surrendered. It fairly took the life out of him. She certainly had not expected to get it from him, thank you! She knew him too well. She had money enough with her to take her comfortably to her home in Glasgow. Did he suppose that she was one to come to the wilds without knowing how she might get back? She had kept it all⁠—all that gold, mind you!⁠—in the lining of her muff.

That woman had come thinking she might not stay! He, Alex McNair, had been, as it were, married on probation. And him a Presbyterian!

He asked hopelessly what kind of a house she wanted.

She replied promptly that she wanted three good big rooms downstairs, and two upstairs, a wee porch, all painted white, except the green shutters, with closets and windows like Chirstie’s and besides a wee white house for the fowls. All this was to be bought today, at once.

The Lord preserve us! Why, there wasn’t a painted fowl house in the state!

The train left for Glasgow at seven the night.

He couldn’t buy all that in a day, could he? He had no money!

He could sell the last great plot he had bought.

Was she daft? Did she suppose he could sell it in a day?

Why could he not sell it in one day? Hadn’t he bought it in one? She would call to the man to bring in those boxes.

He would buy the lumber as soon as he got around to it. Couldn’t she trust him to do it?

He hadn’t told her in the first place that he lived in a sty, had he? She felt the inside of her muff carefully.

The next day in the dusk they drove into Wully’s together, having a wagon whose strange shape would have excited the curiosity of the most