Three times in those ten bleak January days had she given what she declared aloud to be a “final dusting” to each room. Three times had she baked bread, cake, pies, and custard for the invalid (no, the third time she made boiled soft custard to break the monotony), and then hovered between the dread of waste and surfeit in consuming the food.
However, on the tenth day of waiting her spirits rose, for soon after breakfast Robert Stead stopped on his way back from Gilead, whither he rode daily, rain or shine, to the post-office, as the rural carrier went to Windy Hill but once a day and that in early afternoon, to say that he had just heard from Dr. Russell and expected him up from Oaklands that afternoon, as he was coming to meet Adam Lawton at the request of his New York physician, in order to see the invalid safely established after his precarious journey.
In addition to this bit of news, Stead brought a fine pair of wild ducks, shot a few days previous, farther down where the river was not ice-locked, and he had taken the wise precaution of having them dressed by José, his Mexican man of all work, for in Miss Keith’s agitation at the knowledge that her kinsfolk were actually coming that very day, the task of picking pin-feathers would have been impossible.
In fact her hands trembled so, as she took the basket from Stead, that, contrary to his habit of taciturnity, he questioned her closely as to her health, and if he could help her in any preparations, and finally, after leading Manfred to the stable, followed Miss Keith into the house only to find her in the kitchen seated, as Dr. Russell had some months before, with her face pressed against Tatters’ ears in a vain effort to stifle her sobs.
“I’ve wished for kin so long that now they are coming it doesn’t seem as if I could bear it,” she said by way of explanation. “If it was only Adam and Brooke, I wouldn’t mind; I’ve sampled her, and though she’s full of spunk, she’s as pleasant as if she never had a cent, but to think of that high-spirited southern woman, perhaps lording it over me, it’s too much, even though I’m only going to hold over a day or two to give them the lay of the land, as it were. Then like as not their city help will take me for a servant, for they’ll not likely bring less than two for all the cooking and the waiting that they are used to, which reminds me that they’ll need to use the living room to dine in, for of course they won’t eat in the kitchen as I’ve done, and what with turning the south parlour into a bedroom (which it was in his mother’s day) for Adam, so that he can get out on the porch easily, there won’t be any best room at all.