Some one stirred in the house. It was father; he was coming up-stairs; he was still dressed; he had been sitting up all this time with those papers of his. I upbraided him for it, and said it was enough to give him his death of cold, but he seemed scarcely to hear me. His face was very pale.
"It's a rough night, a very rough night, Meg," he said, sorrowfully.
"Oh yes, father, it is," answered I, sympathetically, thinking of the hops that this would be the ruin of. But he made no allusion to them, he only said: "Those poor creatures down in the huts will have a bad time of it. And so many children too! They will be frightened, poor lambs."
And then after a pause he added: "Little David Jarrett was very weak when I called this afternoon, Meg. I'm afraid he'll not last out this gale. I think he would like me to go round and see him."
"Not now, father, not to-night?" I cried. But he did not answer, and I remember that it was with the greatest difficulty that I persuaded him to go to bed.
In the morning I was sorry that I had done so. The little lad was dead.
We were all seated at breakfast. The gale still raged outside; the garden was strewn with boughs of fruit-trees and blossoms of roses that the wind had ruthlessly torn from their stems; even from the distance of our hill we could see the white storm-crests upon the bosom of the laboring sea, and the snow of the foam as it dashed against the strong towers upon the coast.
Mother sat silently pouring the tea and looking anxiously across at father, who was eating no breakfast; Joyce alone was much the same as usual, for I—well I don't know what I looked like—I felt wretched. The post had brought me the reply to my letter to Frank Forrester, and it was not what I wanted.
I sat moody and miserable. And to us all sitting there—very unlike the bright family that we generally were—came a messenger with the news—little David Jarrett had passed away in the night. I can see father's face now; not sad, no: grave, and with a strange drawn look upon it that I could not understand. His eyes shone out very dark and deep from the white face that almost looked like parchment; the shaggy eyebrows and strong tufts of gray hair a mockery of strength upon it. But this is as it rises up before me now in terrible reality; then I saw nothing, I guessed nothing. Oh, father, father, that the old days might come back once more!
He said nothing, he gave no outward sign of trouble; he got up and went out, and we cleared away the breakfast-things. We were not given to expressing ourselves.