Nobody spoke when the letter was finished—nobody, indeed, had spoken all the way through. Tired little Floss, finding no news forthcoming, had fallen asleep.
Roly had sat down to the table, and was sawing an end off the corned beef. Miss Browne, since nothing was read aloud, had gently risen up and was dusting the piano, to be less in the way. But from time to time she glanced at the letter, alarm in her eyes. Could it be the little golden girl was ill?
The father put down the letter, and his hand shook.
'Coming home,' he said, and rose up, looking dazed; 'we—we must stop her at once, of course. Children, how can we stop her?'
Bart's chest was heaving. For a second he had heard the crying come to the little town, and seen the stretching of the arms.
But out of the window lay the grey selection that she had never seen; closer at hand were the rents in his clothes, the broken places on his boots. He pulled himself together.
'I'll go down to the post and cable to her not to come,' he said; 'you be writing it down, dad.'
And Hermie's girl-heart was breaking. The letter had shaken the very centre of her being, and wakened in her a passion of love and longing for this tender woman. Oh, to be held by her, kissed, caressed—to feel that hand on the hair she could not help but know was pretty!
But looking up she saw her father's anguished gaze around him—Bart's manly mastery of himself. She brushed her tears aside.
'I'll get the pen and ink,' she said; 'it—it's late—the cable ought to go to-night.'