"Yes."
The Hardinges themselves told Lily these details all over again, each one repeating the same things over and over again in different words.
Janet and Sylvia sat forlornly in the schoolroom, in old black serge skirts and new black blouses hastily made up by the village dressmaker. They had nothing to do.
An uncle and aunt had arrived and the aunt was upstairs with Ethel. The uncle had gone down to the church "to see about things," they said.
"Oh, Lily, if only it hadn't been so awfully, awfully sudden! We'd all had dinner together, you know, just as usual, and he only stayed in the drawing-room a few minutes, and then said he thought he'd go to bed early."
"He did say he'd a pain in his side; he told Mother so—but we never thought it was anything——" said Sylvia.
"No. And then he went upstairs, and we were all sewing, just as usual, and we never heard anything. It was Emily who heard, from the dining-room, clearing away dinner. And she went upstairs and his door was open, and she saw—oh, Lily!"
Tears choked Janet's utterance.
Both girls had cried until their eyelids were swollen and discoloured and their faces white from exhaustion.
"Has there been time to hear from Dorothy?" Lily asked, for the sake of saying something.