When Molly returned, leading in her sister, Mrs. Wesley was seated by the fire alone. Mother and daughter looked into each other's eyes. In silence Hetty stepped forward and dropped into the chair a minute ago vacated by Kezzy. But for the ticking of the tall clock there was no sound in the kitchen.
Mrs. Wesley read Hetty's eyes; read the truth in them, and something else which tied her tongue. She made no offer to rise and kiss her.
"You are hungry?" she asked after a while, and Molly pushed forward a plate of biscuits. Hetty ate ravenously for a minute (for twenty-four hours not a morsel of food had passed her lips and she had walked close on thirty miles) and then pushed away the plate in disgust. Her eyes still sought her mother's; they neither pleaded nor reproached.
Yet Mrs. Wesley spoke, when next she spoke, as if choosing to answer a plea. "Your father does not know of your return. You may sleep with Molly to-night." She bent over the hearth and raked its embers together. Molly laid a hand lightly on Hetty's shoulder, then slipped it under the crook of her arm, and lifted and led her from the kitchen.
Hetty went unresisting. When they reached the bedroom she halted and stared around as one who had lost her bearings. She winced once and shook as Molly's gentle fingers began to unfasten her bodice, but afterwards stood quite passive and suffered herself to be undressed as a little child. Molly unlaced her shoes. Molly brought cool water in a basin, bathed her face and hands, braided her hair—the masses of red-brown hair she had been used to admire and caress, passing a hand over them as tenderly as of old; then knelt and washed the tired feet, and wiped them, feeling the arch of the instep with her bare hand and chafing them to make sure they were dry—so cold they were.
"Won't you say your prayers, dear?"
Hetty shook her head.
"Then at least you shall kneel by me, and I will pray for both."
Molly's arm was about her. She obeyed and with her waist so encircled knelt by the bed. And twice Molly, not interrupting her prayer, pressed the waist close to her side, and once lifted her lips and kissed the side of the brow.
They arose at length, the one confirmed now and made almost fearless by saintliness and love. But the other, creeping first into the narrow bed, shrank away towards the wall and lay with her eyes fixed on it and staring.