She was a puny sad-faced woman at the best of times, one of those folks who take life hard, and never get any pleasure out of it; but I'd never seen her look so haggard before.
"Where's—Rupert?" she said, and she fixed her eyes on father.
"That's the very question I've been wanting to ask you," father said.
"Sit down, Mrs. Bowman," says mother. "Sit down and tell us what's gone wrong."
Mrs. Bowman dropped into a chair, close to where she was standing.
"He came in late last night," she said. "And he wouldn't say where he'd been. And he wouldn't take his supper. And he looked so strange. And this morning he never came to breakfast. And his door was locked. And he didn't answer. And when we got in he wasn't there. And his bed wasn't slept in. And a lot of his things are gone!"
"Poor dear!" mother says, pitying-like, as the "And" got to be a gasp, and then a sob. "I shouldn't have thought it of Rupert."
"But you don't think he's—gone!" father said.
"Yes, I do think it," Mrs. Bowman cried, in a weak, broken sort of voice. "I do think it, and I'm sure of it! Kitty knows why! If you ask Kitty she can tell. She's driven him off, and that's what she's done."
"Kitty!" father said, looking at me.