That night, after dinner, Mrs Mariner asked Jill to read to her.
“Print tries my eyes so, dear,” said Mrs Mariner. It was a small thing, but it had the significance of that little cloud that arose out of the sea like a man's hand. Jill appreciated the portent. She was, she perceived, to make herself useful.
“Of course I will,” she said cordially. “What would you me to read?”
She hated reading aloud. It always made her throat sore, and her eye skipped to the end of each page and took the interest out of it long before the proper time. But she proceeded bravely, for her conscience was troubling her. Her sympathy was divided equally between these unfortunate people who had been saddled with an undesired visitor and herself who had been placed in a position at which every independent nerve in her rebelled. Even as a child she had loathed being under obligations to strangers or those whom she did not love.
“Thank you, dear,” said Mrs Mariner, when Jill's voice had roughened to a weary croak. “You read so well.” She wrestled ineffectually with her handkerchief against the cold in the head from which she always suffered. “It would be nice if you would do it every night, don't you think? You have no idea how tired print makes my eyes.”
On the following morning after breakfast, at the hour when she had hitherto gone house-hunting with Mr Mariner, the child Tibby, of whom up till now she had seen little except at meals, presented himself to her, coated and shod for the open and regarding her with a dull and phlegmatic gaze.
“Ma says will you please take me for a nice walk!”
Jill's heart sank. She loved children, but Tibby was not an ingratiating child. He was a Mr Mariner in little. He had the family gloom. It puzzled Jill sometimes why this branch of the family should look on life with so jaundiced an eye. She remembered her father as a cheerful man, alive to the small humors of life.
“All right, Tibby. Where shall we go?”
“Ma says we must keep on the roads and I mustn't slide.”
Jill was thoughtful during the walk. Tibby, who was no conversationalist, gave her every opportunity for meditation. She perceived that in the space of a few hours she had sunk in the social scale. If there was any difference between her position and that of a paid nurse and companion, it lay in the fact that she was not paid. She looked about her at the grim countryside, gave a thought to the chill gloom of the house to which she was about to return, and her heart sank.
Nearing home, Tibby vouchsafed his first independent observation.
“The hired man's quit!”
“Has he?”
“Yep. Quit this morning.”
It had begun to snow. They turned and made their way back to the house. The information she had received did not cause Jill any great apprehension. It was hardly likely that her new duties would include the stoking of the furnace. That and cooking appeared to be the only acts about the house which were outside her present sphere of usefulness.
“He killed a rat once in the wood-shed with an axe,” said Tibby chattily. “Yessir! Chopped it right in half, and it bled!”
“Look at the pretty snow falling on the trees,” said Jill faintly.
At breakfast next morning, Mrs Mariner having sneezed, made a suggestion.
“Tibby, darling, wouldn't it be nice if you and cousin Jill played a game of pretending you were pioneers in the Far West?”
“What's a pioneer?” enquired Tibby, pausing in the middle of an act of violence on a plate of oatmeal.
“The pioneers were the early settlers in this country, dear. You have read about them in your history book. They endured a great many hardships, for life was very rough for them, with no railroads or anything. I think it would be a nice game to play this morning.”
Tibby looked at Jill. There was doubt in his eye. Jill returned his gaze sympathetically. One thought was in both their minds.
“There is a string to this!” said Tibby's eye.
“Exactly what I think!” said Jill's.
Mrs Mariner sneezed again.
“You would have lots of fun,” she said.
“What'ud we do?” asked Tibby cautiously. He had been this way before. Only last Summer, on his mother's suggestion that he should pretend he was a ship-wrecked sailor on a desert island, he had perspired through a whole afternoon cutting the grass in front of the house to make a ship-wrecked sailor's simple bed.
“I know,” said Jill. “We'll pretend we're pioneers stormbound in their log cabin in the woods, and the wolves are howling outside, and they daren't go out, so they make a lovely big fire and sit in front of it and read.”
“And eat candy,” suggested Tibby, warming to the idea.
“And eat candy,” agreed Jill.
Mrs Mariner frowned.
“I was going to suggest,” she said frostily, “that you shovelled the snow away from the front steps!”
“Splendid!” said Jill. “Oh, but I forgot. I want to go to the village first.”
“There will be plenty of time to do it when you get back.”
“All right. I'll do it when I get back.”
