“Think you’re too tired to go an’ look for him, Johnny?” she asked presently.
Johnny thought he was. “It’s them caterpillars, safe enough,” he said. “He never saw any before, an’ it was just a chance last night. To-night he can’t find ’em, and he’s keepin’ on searchin’ all over the Pits and the Slade; that’s about it.”
There was another pause, till Mrs. May remembered something. “The bit o’ candle he had in the lantern wouldn’t last an hour,” she said. “He’d ha’ had to come back for more. Johnny, I’m gettin’ nervous.”
“Why, what for?” asked Johnny, though the circumstance of the short candle startled his confidence. “He might get a light from somewhere else, ’stead o’ comin’ all the way back.”
“But where?” asked Mrs. May. “There’s only the Dun Cow, an’ he might almost as well come home—besides, he wouldn’t ask ’em.”
Johnny left the chair, and joined his mother at the door. As they listened a more regular sound made itself plain, amid the low hum of the trees; footsteps. “Here he comes,” said Johnny.
But the sound neared and the steps were long and the tread was heavy. In a few moments Bob Smallpiece’s voice came from the gloom, wishing them good-night.
Mrs. May called to him. “Have you seen gran’dad anywhere, Mr. Smallpiece?”
The keeper checked his strides, and came to the garden gate, piebald with the light from the cottage door. “No,” he said, “I ain’t run across him, nor seen his light anywheres. Know which way he went?”
“He was just going to Wormleyton Pits an’ back, that’s all.”