Page:In the Roar of the Sea.djvu/260

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CHAPTER XXXIV.


A BREAKFAST.


"She has been over-exerted, over-excited," said Miss Trevisa. "Leave her to recover; in a few days she will be herself again. Remember, her father died of heart complaint, and though Judith resembles her mother rather than a Trevisa, she may have inherited from my brother just that one thing she had better have let him carry to his grave with him."

So Judith was given the little room that adjoined her aunt's, and Miss Trevisa postponed for a week her migration to Othello Cottage.

Aunt Dionysia was uneasy about her niece; perhaps her conscience did suffer from some qualms when she saw how Judith shrank from the union she had driven her into for her own selfish convenience. She treated her in the wisest manner, now she had brought her to the Glaze, for she placed her in her old room next her own, and left her there to herself. Judith could hear her aunt walking about and muttering in the adjoining chamber, and was content to be left alone to recover her composure and strength.

Uncle Zachie and Jump were, however, in sore distress; they had made the trim cottage ready, had prepared a wedding breakfast, engaged a helping hand or two, and no one had come to partake. Nor was Mr. Desiderius Mules in a cheerful mood. He had been invited to the breakfast, and was hungry and cold. He had to wait while Mr. Menaida ran up to Pentyre to know whether any one was going to honor his board. While he was away the rector stamped about the parlor, growling that he believed he was about to be "choused out of his breakfast. There was really no knowing what these people in this out-of-the-world corner might do." Then he pulled off his boots and shook the sand out, rang for Jump, and asked at what hour precisely the