"Oh, thank you!" Margaret replied earnestly.
She was really nearly done up with battling against the wind and the rain, so she raised no objection to returning with Salome. The little girls reached the cottage in safety, and upon entering, found Miss Conway in the kitchen. Having knocked in vain at the door, she had tried to open it, and finding it unlocked, had gone in; she too had thought it possible that Gerald might be there.
"If he's on the beach, father will find him, you may depend upon that," Salome assured her. "And he will bring him straight here. I fear you will both catch dreadful colds," and she glanced commiseratingly from Margaret to the governess.
"We shan't mind that, so long as Gerald is safe," Margaret returned. She was shivering and her teeth were chattering, as much with fright on her brother's account as with cold. "Oh, Miss Conway, what shall we do if anything has happened to him? Mother will never forgive us if—"
"Dear Margaret, don't be morbid; neither you nor I have been to blame," Miss Conway reminded her. "If harm has come to your brother, it has been through no fault of ours. Who would imagine that he would deliberately get up and dress and steal out of the house unknown to anyone? Whatever the result of this mad freak of his proves to be, will have been his own doing."
"It is terrible to think what may have happened to him. The wind is high enough to blow him into the sea if he is really on the beach. Oh, mother will hate the sight of me for ever, if Gerald is drowned!" And Margaret burst into tears.
"Don't, dear, don't!" Miss Conway said imploringly.
"You know it is true," Margaret cried passionately. "If I was killed, mother would not care—not much; but Gerald is as the apple of her eye."
Before any answer could be made to this, the cottage door opened, and Josiah strode into the kitchen, bearing Gerald in his arms. He had discovered the little boy crouched in the shelter of a boat which had been drawn high up on the beach, out of the reach of the tide.
"There is no wreck," Gerald said disgustedly, as Josiah set him down on the floor, "and I'm cold and wet, and should like to go home."