All the next day the doubt was growing into certainty. Mr and Mrs Evson were summoned from Semlyn, and came with feelings that cannot be depicted. Power gave to Mrs Evson the coat he had picked up, and he and Henderson hardly ever left the parents of their friend, doing all they could to cheer their spirits and support in them the hopes they could hardly feel themselves. To this day Mrs Evson cherishes that coat as a dear and sacred relic, which reminds her of the mercy which sustained her during the first great agony which she had endured in her happy life. Power kept poor Kenrick’s hat, for no relation of his was there to claim it.
Another day dawned, and settled grief and gloom fell on all alike at Saint Winifred’s—the boys, the masters, the inhabitants. The sight of Mr and Mrs Evson’s speechless anguish impressed all hearts, and by this time hope seemed quenched for ever. For now one boy only,—though young hearts are slow to give up hope—had refused to believe the worst. It was Eden. He persisted that the three boys must have been picked up. The belief had come upon him suddenly, and grown upon him he knew not how, but he was sure of it; and therefore his society brought most relief and comfort to the torn heart of the mother. “What made him so confident?” she asked. He did not know; he had seen it, or dreamt it, or felt it somehow, only he felt unalterably convinced that so it was. “They will come back, dear Mrs Evson, they will come back, you will see,” was his repeated asseveration; and oppressed as her heart was with doubt and fear, she was never weary of those words.
And on the fourth day, while Mr Evson was absent, having gone to make enquiries in London of all the ships which had passed by Saint Winifred’s on that day, Eden, radiant with joy, rushed into Dr Lane’s drawing-room, where Mrs Evson was sitting, and utterly regardless of les convenances, burst out with the exclamation, “O Mrs Evson, it is true, it is true what I always told you. Didn’t I say that I knew it? They have been picked up.”
“Hush, my boy; steady,” whispered Mrs Lane; “you should have delivered the message less suddenly. The revulsion of feeling from sorrow to joy will be too much for her.”
“O Eden, tell me,” said the mother faintly, recalling her senses bewildered by the shock of intelligence; “are you certain? Oh, where are my boys?”
“You will see them soon,” he said very gently; and the next moment, to confirm his words, the door again new open, and Charlie Evson was wrapped in his mother’s arms, and strained to her heart, and covered with her kisses, and his bright young face bathed in her tears of gratitude and joy.
“Charlie, darling Charlie, where is Walter?” were her first words.
“What, don’t you know me then, mother; and have you no kiss to spare for me?” said the playful voice of a boy enveloped in a sailor’s blue shell-jacket; and then it was Walter’s turn to feel in that long embrace what is the agonising fondness of a mother’s love.
Kenrick was looking on a little sadly—not envious, but made sorrowful by memory. But the next moment Walter, taking him by the hand, had introduced him to his mother and she kissed him too on the cheek. “Your name is so familiar to me, Kenrick,” she said; “and you have shared their dangers.”
“Walter has twice saved my life, Mrs Evson,” he answered, “and this time, I trust, he has saved it in more senses than one.”