“He must be here soon,” said Mrs. Kayll, taking a fresh needleful of cotton, and trying to go on with her work; but somehow or other the needle would not go in at the right place, and Mrs. Kayll’s head drooped forward slowly more and more, until her chin rested upon her breast.
She, too, was asleep. The clock at once seized this opportunity, and rushed on as fast as it could go, the big hand hurrying round its face and the little one creeping steadily after. Half-past twelve. She did not move. The hands hurried on, and suddenly the tired mother started awake, roused by a loud warning sound, in time to hear it strike “One.”
“Good gracious!” she exclaimed, springing to her feet, rubbing her eyes and staring hard at the clock, before she could believe. “One! How late he is! I must have been nodding.”
She walked up and down the room a few times, to wake herself more thoroughly; and then again tried to go on with her work, thinking meanwhile of the little girl and her sad story.
“They are keeping him long,” she said to herself; “but there’s no saying how much worse he may have found matters than he expected. Possibly they are in such great trouble that he cannot bring himself to leave them. Poor Robert! How worn out he will be!”
Stitch, stitch. And then the drowsiness came back, and the clock made haste, and succeeded in striking two without waking her. She awoke, though, at a quarter past the hour, put away her work, and walked to the door to stand looking out into the street.
It is very painful to wait and wait for someone you expect, who does not come. At first you are surprised, then astonished, then you begin to be anxious, after which, if the expected person is one for whom you care much, you become seriously frightened, and imagine every terrible thing that could possibly have come to pass.
So it was with Mrs. Kayll. At three o’clock she fancied her husband must have been run over, or have met with some other accident, and before long she determined to wait no longer, but to go out and look for him.
She went upstairs, the first thing, bent over the bed where Madge was sleeping, and gently shook her by the arm. The girl opened her eyes in an instant.
“Hush, Madge! Don’t wake the others, pray.”