having pronounced his church like a big tin box all up in frills; and how he had admired the crabs, and run after the waves, and had been devoted to the Willie, who had thought him troublesome—giving all the anecdotes, to which Frank listened with set face and dry eyes, storing them for his wife. He thanked Mrs. Morton for all her care and tenderness, and expended assurances that no one thought her to blame.
‘It is one of those dispensations,’ he said, ‘that no one can guard against. We can only be thankful for the years of joy that no one can take from us, and try to be worthy to meet him hereafter.’
Mrs. Morton had wept so much that she was very glad to seize the first excuse for wishing good-night. She said that she had put all Michael’s little things in a box in his father’s room, for him to take home to his mother, and bade Frank—as once more she called him—good-night, kissing him as she had never done before. The shock had brought out all that was best and most womanly in her.
p. 250That box had an irresistible attraction for Frank. He could not but open it, and on the top lay the white woolly, headless dog that had been Mite’s special darling, had been hugged by him in his slumbers every night, and been the means of many a joyous game when father and mother came up to wish the noisy creature good-night, and ‘Tarlo’ had been made to bark at them.
Somehow the ‘never more’ overcame him completely. He had not before been beyond the restraint of guarding his feelings for Mary’s sake; and, tired with the long day, and torn by the evening’s narration, all his self-command gave way, and he fell into a perfect anguish of deep-drawn, almost hysterical sobbing.
Those sobs were heard through the thin partition in Ida’s room. They were very terrible to her. They broke down the remnant of her excuse that the child was an imposition. They woke all her woman’s tenderness, and the impulse to console carried her in a few moments to the door.
‘Uncle! Uncle Frank!’
‘I’m not ill,’ answered a broken, heaving, impatient voice. ‘I want nothing.’
‘Oh, let me in, dear uncle—I’ve something to tell you!’
‘Not now,’ came on the back of a sob. ‘Go!’
‘Oh, now, now!’ and she even opened the door a little. ‘He is not drowned! At least, Rose Rollstone thinks —’
‘What?’ and he threw the door wide open.
‘Rose Rollstone is sure she saw him with Louisa Hall in London that day,’ hurried out Ida, still bent p. 251on screening herself. ‘She’s gone to Canada. It’s there that Herbert is gone to find him and bring him home!’
‘And why—why were we never told?’
‘You were too ill, uncle, and Rose did not know about it till she came home. Then she told Herbert, and he hoped to find him and write.’
‘When was this?’
‘When Herbert came home—the 29th or 30th of June,’ said Ida, trembling. ‘He
It was a strange groaning sigh that answered; then, with a great effort—
‘Thank you, Ida; I can’t understand it yet—I can’t talk! Good-night!’ Then, with an afterthought, when he had almost shut his door, he turned the handle again to say, ‘Who did you say saw—thought she saw—my boy? Where?’
‘Rose Rollstone, uncle; first at the North Station—then at Waterloo! And Louisa Hall too!’
‘I thank you; good-night!’
And for what a night of strange dreams, prayers, and uncertainties did Frank shut himself in—only forcing himself by resolute will into sleeping at last, because he knew that strength and coolness were needful for to- morrow’s investigation.
p. 252CHAPTER XXXVII
HOPE
That last sleep lasted long, till the sound of the little tinkling bell came through the open window, and then the first waking thought that Mite was alive was at first taken for a mere blissful dream. It was only the sight of the woolly dog that recalled with certainty the conversation with Ida.
To pursue that strange hint was of course the one impulse. The bell had ceased before Frank had been able to finish dressing, but the house was so far from having wakened to full life, that remembering the lateness of the breakfast hour, he decided on hastening out to lay his anxious, throbbing feelings before his God, if only to join in the prayer that our desires may be granted as may be most expedient for us.
Nor was he without a hope that the girl whom Constance described as so devout and religious might be found there.
And she was; he knew her by sight well enough to accost her when she came out with ‘Miss Rollstone, I believe?’
p. 253She bowed, her heart thumping almost as much as the father’s, in the importance of what she had to tell, and the doubt how much she had a right to speak without betrayal.
‘I am told,’ Lord Northmoor said, with a tremble in his voice, ‘that you think you saw my poor little boy.’
‘I am almost sure I did,’ said Rose.
‘And when, may I ask?’
‘On the evening of the Wednesday in Whitsun week,’ said Rose.
‘Just when he was lost—and where?’
