“All is wrong! All is wrong!” it protested.
What could that mean? Carin, of course, would know in a few minutes. She would telephone. But Azalea had no telephone and she would not be allowed to ride to the valley at night.
“All is wrong—oh, very, very, wrong!” the lantern kept on saying.
What could she do to let Annie Laurie know that she understood? Poor Annie Laurie, who was brave about everything! It was a real trouble, Azalea felt sure. Had one of the aunts fallen and broken a bone? Could Mr. Pace be ill? Were the cattle poisoned? Azalea took her lantern and twisted it around and around until it must have looked to Annie Laurie like a snare of fireflies. Then Carin, understanding, did the same thing. After that it was dark on Carin’s roof; then Annie Laurie’s lantern disappeared too. They had gone to the telephone, Azalea inferred.
She stamped back through the dew, hot with impatience. “I shan’t sleep a wink to-night,” she declared.
She undressed in anguish of soul, sank on her knees and sent up a fervent prayer for her friend, and then throwing herself on what she expected and desired to be a sleepless bed, fell fast asleep.
Yet in her sleep she had many dreams, and in each of them Annie Laurie appeared, always in some horrid plight. Now wolves were chasing her; now she had fallen over the cataract; now the horses were running away with her; now she was speeding down the road again, away from the scorn of her schoolmates, and little drops of blood were falling on the road from her shattered heart.
But none of these things were anywhere near the truth, though nothing could be more terrible to Annie Laurie than what actually had happened.
It had come about after church. Dinner was over; the house had been tidied, and the two aunts and Mr. Pace and Annie Laurie sat in the sitting room before a fine fire. The aunts had taken out their pious books and were reading them. Mr. Pace was engaged in plodding sleepily through somebody’s account of the “Thirty Year’s War.” As for Annie, she was supposed to be writing to a friend, but as a matter of fact she was scribbling some verses which she meant to show to the girls the next day. Nibbling the end of one’s pen is more or less of a necessity when one is writing verses, and Annie Laurie, having got as far as that—and not much farther—was sampling the fine inky flavor of hers, and so chanced to look up and to let her glance fall on her father.
At first she was only conscious that his expression was not quite familiar to her. Then—well, then suddenly and terribly, she saw that he was indeed changed—that something frightful had happened to him. She sprang toward him, calling his name.