The man strode past as she spoke, and Mrs. Goodenough gave a start.
“Eavesdroppers don’t never ’ear no good o’ themselves,” remarked she sententiously.
But Tom Wycombe had heeded neither the first nor the last remark.
His work was done and he was hastening to his child; he neither cared for nor noticed any one else.
The sun, when it set, shed just as warm a glow over his heart as it did over the marsh-land, though he did not put two and two together about it. From the village on the hill, the flaming sky that reddened behind the solemn buttresses of the ancient church, sent soft and palpitating reflections over the quiet land that lay stretched below; and the tender radiance reached to his patient spirit also. For he too had waited through the hot hours for this blessed eventide that lay so calm and peaceful a touch upon the seething earth, and the red in the west was the signal for his rest and for his reward.
He hastened towards the one thing in the world that he loved—glad, eager, and a little anxious as he always was when his little maid was, even a stone’s throw, away from him.
And as he drew near to the river-bank where he had been told that she was playing, his vague uneasiness began to take a sort of shape. For there was a little knot of children gathered there—and they were not noisily fighting or playing—but standing huddled together gazing into the water, and two of them, who were girls, were crying, and one, who was a boy, was stripping off his little jacket.
Wycombe dashed forward—throwing his harvesting tools on the ground as he ran, and pulling off his coat.
The children parted as they saw him, speechless with terror; their silence told him the truth, but he needed no telling—he had known it was his Daisy who was in the water.
“Where?” was all he said, breathless.