"Yes, we were coming, anyway. Yes, we'll bring Miss Draper's sister.
Don't bother to meet us. We'll take a taxi straight from the station."
Staggering with terror, I caught her hand, and prevented her putting the receiver back on its hook.
"Is Dicky dead?" I demanded.
"No, no, child," she said soothingly.
"I don't believe it," I cried, maddened at my own fear. "Call him to the 'phone. Let me hear his voice myself, then I'll believe you."
She took the receiver out of my grip, put it back upon the hook, and grasped my hands firmly, holding them as she would those of a hysterical child.
"See here, Madge," she said sternly, "Dicky is very much alive, but he is hurt slightly and needs you. We have barely time to get Mrs. Gorman and that train. Hurry and get ready."
* * * * *
Dicky's eager eyes looked up from his white face into mine. His voice, weak, but thrilling with the old love note, repeated my name over and over, as if he could not say it enough.
I sank on my knees beside the bed in which Dicky lay. I realized in a hazy sort of fashion that the room must be Harry Underwood's own bed chamber, but I spent no time in conjecture. All my being was fused in the one joyous certainty that Dicky was alive and in my arms, and that I had been assured he would get well. I laid my face against his cheek, shifted my arms so that no weight should rest against his bandaged left shoulder, which, at my first glimpse of it, had caused me to shudder involuntarily.