“‘Wish’ is no word for it,” she answered. “Sometimes it’s such awful longing that I feel almost as if I could lie down and die with the heart pain. It’s worst at night—the thirst to have her little arms round my neck once more. But they are not little any longer, and I’m nothing to her now. She is happy without me, and she doesn’t even know she has a mother living. I’ve not seen her since she was that high, Jervis—under four years old—with such pretty ways, and such a loving heart! But children soon forget you know. I don’t suppose she’d even know me if she saw me. No, of course she couldn’t. The trouble has been that I could so very, very seldom hear of her; and she might any time have died without my knowing. I never dared to write straight, and say I was alive, and ask. I was too ashamed and too unhappy; and there were those promises in the way.”
“You’ll manage to see her now,” said Jervis; and Marian flushed.
“Perhaps. I shouldn’t wonder. I’ll try some day. A mother does crave fer a look. But I shan’t tell her who I am, so long as she is happy and doesn’t need me.”
Voices presently sounded outside, and after a while Hannah came in.
“There’s been a bad train accident,” she said abruptly.
“Where?” asked Jervis.
“Near Woodleigh Station. Jim’s but just got back, and I asked him whatever he had been dawdling about. He says father sent him to the station for a parcel, and of course he wasted his time there, playing and gossiping. Anyway, there he was when the accident happened, and he stayed to see all he could—sure to do that, or he wouldn’t be a boy! Some sort of blunder about the train coming in; it got upon the wrong line, and ran into another just going out of the station.”
“A collision?” Marian said.
“Yes. Jim says it might have been a deal worse, if both trains had been going at the top of their speed, which they weren’t. But anyway it’s bad enough. One engine went right over, and a front carriage is smashed, and a lot of people are hurt. There’s a stoker with his leg broken.”
“That’s not the train, I hope, that Mr. Rutherford was expected back by?” Jervis suddenly said.