Where was Hermie? Mrs. Cameron looked round in surprise. It seemed only two minutes since she had been cutting the bread, and laughing at Roly because he had arranged his plate as a battle-field, with the peas for the army, the cauliflower as a kopje, the mashed potatoes in dots for the tents, while a slice of beef made the enemy's laager, and a gravy river flowed between the troops. Why had she left the table like this?
'Go—to—Hermie!' gasped the shivering, sobbing woman on the sofa. 'I—am—all right—quick, quick!'
Where had the girl gone? No one but Miss Browne had even noticed her chair was empty.
Mr. Cameron armed himself with another tumbler of cold water, and came across to the sofa.
'I will look after Miss Browne,' he said. 'You go to Hermie; perhaps she was a little faint.'
'Down—the—path,' gasped Miss Browne, 'near the wattles, most likely.'
Mrs. Cameron made her way down the path, looking from left to right, a puzzled expression on her face. The girl was nowhere to be seen. She looked among the roses, in the various shady corners, beneath the trees. Finally she came to the thick-growing wattles near the fence, and a gleam of blue cambric showed through the leaves. The mother went in among the bushes, and found the girl face downward on the ground, sobbing in so bitter and heartbroken a way that she was quite alarmed for a moment. Then a wondering comprehension came; her girl was almost a woman. Was it possible she had cared for this friend of the family in a different way from Bart and Floss and Roly?
'My poor little girl!' she said, and sat down on the ground beside her, and lifted the bright head that had been Morty's perpetual delight on to her knee.
But Hermie pulled herself away, and rose wildly to her feet, and ran this way among the bushes with her broken heart, and then that way.
'Oh,' she sobbed, 'go away, go away—I want to be alone! Oh, it is my fault!—I want to be alone—oh, mother, mother!'—and she came back to her mother's side, and fell down beside her again, clinging to her piteously. The mother said nothing at all—just stroked her hair and let her weep as she would, and soon a little calmness came back to the girl.