"I don't want a doll," Anne spoke with difficulty. "Tell them not to, Miss Margery. It wouldn't be Honey-Sweet. Please, oh, please, let's go home, Miss Margery."
Poor little Anne! Miss Margery had her downstairs to tea that evening, and gave her milk toast and pink iced cakes and candy in a Santa Claus box that was to have waited till Christmas. Then she sang Anne's favorite songs. But the shadow did not lift. Anne kissed her friend good-night and crept away to bed before nine o'clock. An hour later, Miss Dorcas and Miss Margery tiptoed into her room. There she lay, her face swollen with weeping and her breath coming in sobbing gasps. She stirred and crumpled a pillow in her arms, and crooned in her sleep the old lullaby:—
"'Honey, honey! Sweet, sweet, sweet!
Honey, honey! Honey-Sweet!'"
CHAPTER XXVIII
All this time—so little is our big world—Miss Drayton was hardly a stone's throw from Anne. She was keeping house for her brother-in-law who was busy with office work in Washington. Pat was at home, having entered classes to prepare for George Washington University. It was strange that Anne and her old friends went to and fro, back and forth, so near together and yet did not meet. They must have missed one another sometimes by only a minute or two in a shop or on a street-car or at a street corner. But week after week passed without bringing them together.
One morning, as Mr. Patterson was glancing over his newspaper at breakfast, he uttered an exclamation of surprise. "This is something you'll want to hear," he said to Miss Drayton—and then he read aloud an article with these headlines:—
"Truth Stranger than Fiction
"Felon Gives himself up
"Returns to take his Punishment."