“I tell you I shall go mad—mad—if I don’t go!” the girl said wildly. He saw the burning look in her eyes, the pain at her lips, and fell back suddenly, awkwardly.
“All right, go on,” he said.
Then his just wakening brotherly-protection ideas occurred to him.
“I say, you can’t go,” he said; “don’t be a silly. You’re only a girl, and it’s dark,—let me go, Nell; I’ll run all the way, and come straight back and tell you.”
“I must go,” she repeated hoarsely. “Make them go to bed; give Poppet her medicine; don’t leave the matches near Peter.”
She slipped off his detaining hand, and the next minute was flying up the road through the cold white moonlight, a small dark figure with desperate eyes, and the wretchedest little heart in the world.
[245]
]CHAPTER XXII.
AMARANTH OR ASPHODEL?
“Falling with my weight of cares
Upon the great world’s altar stairs,
That slope through darkness up to God.”