Mrs. Burton turned white and shivered. Just so had her heavy news come to her, and in her sympathy for Mrs. Jenkin her own wounds bled afresh. But Katherine could not stay to comfort her, the other poor woman needed it so much more.
"Nellie, I am going down to Seal Cove, and if Mrs. Jenkin needs me
I shall stay until the morning," she said hurriedly.
"That is good of you, dear," sobbed the elder sister, and would have said something more, only Katherine went out of the room so hastily that there was no chance.
Poor Katherine had fled so precipitately through fear that Nellie should say some word about Jervis, with possibly some commiseration for Mary, and that just now would be a thing too hard to bear. Wrapping herself from neck to heels in a mackintosh coat, with a cap of the same, Katherine got into her boat and pulled down river through the driving rain. She rowed as fast as she could, not so much from haste to be at the end of her journey as from a desire to have no time to think.
Tying her boat up at the foot of the path leading to Mrs. Jenkin's house, she climbed to the house door, slipping at every step. A moment she paused before knocking, expecting to hear sobs and wailing from the inside; but instead there came a burst of childish laughter and a great stamping of little feet, and then she heard Mrs. Jenkin singing in a cheerful, if not very musical, voice: "My love is a soldier dressed in red".
Katherine stood appalled. Was it possible that Oily Dave had not told this poor woman of the trouble which had come to her? In that case she would have to break the heavy news herself, and at the thought she turned coward, and would gladly have slipped away again by the way she had come.
Mrs. Jenkin reached the end of the verse, and shrill, childish voices took up the chorus:
"In red, in red, he's all in red,
My love is a soldier dressed in red".
Katherine stood listening while the chorus ended. Then Mrs. Jenkin started on afresh: "My love is a sailor clothed in blue".
But this was too much, and Katherine, pushing the door hurriedly open, forgetting the small ceremony of knocking, crossed the threshold and stood, a dripping figure, just inside the door.