CHAPTER IX.

WAITING.

Joan did not sleep much on that eventful night. She lay down in her bed after the uncomfortable sleep which she had snatched among the wash-tubs, but it was more as a matter of form than for any good there was in it. She was secretly very anxious about Harry. Though she had taken upon her so cheerfully to affirm that he had gone to the “Red Lion,” she had not any confidence in this suggestion. She lay staring at the window as it slowly grew a glimmering square, in the cold blue of the dawning, wondering what had become of him. She had no great imagination, and therefore there did not rush upon her mind a crowd of visionary dangers such as would have besieged her mother, but she lay with her face turned up to the ceiling and her eyes wide open, asking herself what he was likely to have done; what he would be doing now? He might fall into bad company, she thought, with a distinct identification of one house in the village which did not bear a very good reputation, and of which, as it happened, Harry was entirely ignorant; or he might go straight off to the office, which, on the whole, was the best thing he could do. That was all very well for the future; but where was he to-night? where was he _now?_

This was a question which Joan could not answer to herself. She thought over a great many things during the unaccustomed vigil. Never before had her mother’s anxieties and “fuss” appeared as they now did to Joan with a certain amount of reason in them. Certainly father was getting beyond bearing, she said to herself. He was worse the older he grew. She had told him that she was the best servant he had in the house, though she got no wages, and it was true. If she liked “to take a situation” she could earn excellent wages, and get praise instead of abuse for what she