Jerry hesitated a minute. "I—think I'll go along," he said.
For an instant their eyes met, sympathetically, and did not smile though their lips curved.
Down in the kitchen, meanwhile, Fairy sat somberly beside the table with a pile of darning which she jabbed at viciously with the needle. Lark was perched on the ice chest, but Carol, true to her childish instincts, hunched on the floor with her feet curled beneath her. Connie leaned against the table within reach of Fairy's hand.
"They're awfully slow," she complained once.
Nobody answered. The deadly silence clutched them.
"Oh, talk," Carol blurted out desperately. "You make me sick! It isn't anything to be so awfully scared about. Everybody does it."
A little mumble greeted this, and then, silence again. Whenever it grew too painful, Carol said reproachfully, "Everybody does it." And no one ever answered.
They looked up expectantly when the men entered. It seemed cozier somehow when they were all together in the little kitchen.
"Sure, she's all right," came the bright response from their father. And then silence.