“Nothing wrong, I hope, sir?” he said.
“No,” answered Mr. Churchill, with a sort of gasp. “The truth is, Johnson—don’t mention this—but I’m afraid my daughter and my new wife did not get on over-well, and I think the foolish girl must have run away from home. Was she alone when she came to the station?”
“Quite alone, sir,” answered the station-master. “In the afternoon a boy brought a trunk and said it had to wait for a young lady who was coming to catch a train. And I just happened to look at the address, and it was ‘Miss Churchill, London.’”
“And that was all?”
“That was all, sir—‘Miss Churchill, London.’ I wondered at the time there was nothing more, but there was not.”
“And the boy who brought the trunk; it was not one of my boys, was it?”
“Oh, dear, no, sir! I know both your boys quite well. This was a common sort of lad in a fustian jacket, and I don’t think I’d know him again.”
“And she came to the train? How did she look?”
“She came into the station quite cheerful, sir, and she took a second-class fare to London, and I put her into the carriage myself. I asked her if she was going for a long visit, as you see I’ve known her ever since she was a child, and she smiled in her pretty way. ’Yes, Mr. Johnson,’ said she, ‘a long visit;’ and those were her last words to me.”
Mr. Churchill groaned aloud.