“Come back to us, dear boy; keep your feet dry on the journey,” said Miss Rachel, while Miss Barbara, holding his hand, whispered gently that she would always pray for him.
Eppie and Gavan had not looked at each other, and when the moment came for their farewell, beneath the eyes of aunts, uncle, Miss Grimsby, and the servants, it seemed the least significant of all, was the shortest, the most formal. They looked, they held hands for a moment, and Gavan faltered out some words. Eppie did not speak and kept her firm smile. Only when he had followed the general into the carriage and it was slowly grinding over the gravel did something hot, stinging, choking, flare up in her, something that made her know this smooth parting to be intolerable—not to be borne.
She darted out into the rain. Bobbie was dead; Gavan was gone; why, she was alone—alone—and a question was beating through her as she ran down the drive and, with a leap to its step, caught the heavy old carriage in its careful turning at the gate. Gavan saw, at the window, her white, freckled face, her startled eyes, her tossed hair all beaded with the finely falling rain—like an apparition on the ghostly background of mist.
“Oh, Gavan, don’t forget me!” That had been the flaring terror.
He had just time to catch her hand, to lean to her, to kiss her. He did not speak. Mutely he looked at the little comrade all the things he could not say: what she was to him, what he felt for her, what he would always feel,—always, always, always, his eyes said to hers as she stepped back to the road and was gone.
PART II
I
