But after the excitement of getting him ready, and the passionate though undemonstrative farewell, a reaction came. She shut herself up in her room once or twice, so that her tears might not be suspected; or, when she had grown more accustomed to his absence, sat brooding in the living-place or the porch, trying to imagine what he was doing and to picture his surroundings. "I must be a fool to go on like this at my age," she said to herself; "I wouldn't let the girls know for anything." For Margaret, her father's going brought all sorts of restrictions and limitations; but her mother was too much wrapped up in her own dreams to perceive it, or to draw closer to her than before, and so to make up for the loss of his companionship. Thus Hannah was free to show the dislike she had always felt and to worry her with petty tyrannies. "The best parlor will be used by any one who likes till he returns," she promptly announced. "It has been kept apart long enough, as if the whole of the house wasn't fit for those who own it to live in, unless it was sometimes by way of a treat." "It was kept apart because father wanted to read and write and be quiet," Margaret said. "Well, there's no one who need read and write now; you can do more useful things, and will be all the better for it; as for being quiet, well, there's others that will want to be quiet sometimes, and it'll do for them. Mr. Garratt is coming over to his dinner on Sundays, and we shall sit there in the afternoon--if we are not taking a walk. Mother is always in the porch, and we don't want you hanging about us." "I am glad to get away," Margaret said, quickly. "You do your best to keep his eyes fixed on you, anyway; but you needn't think you'll draw him to yourself; it isn't likely he'd mean anything by an unbeliever."