The words were commonplace, but there was a world of meaning in the tone.
"I--I thought you were busy," she said indistinctly, after a pause in which the one thing in the world seemed to her that tightening hold upon her hand. "If you are--I--I could go...."
There was another pause--a longer one.
"I thought you were going out," he said at last, and his voice, though distinct, was not quite steady; "but if you aren't, we might go together. My work can easily stand over, and--and Campbell can drive you out some other day when I can't."
She gave an odd little sound between a laugh and a sob.
"That would be best, perhaps," she said. "I'd like the boys to have this"--she laid her other hand tenderly on the rag doll--"by the Christmas mail I had forgotten."
Old Premoo was sweeping up the withered leaves and flowers from the poinsettia and oleander hedge, when first one and then another high dogcart drove past him. And when the second one had disappeared, he turned to the general audience on the other side of the hedge, and said with great pride and pomp--
"Look you! The scoffers mocked at my doll, but the Huzoors understand. The sahib himself has taken it to send to the little sahibs, and the mem packed it up herself and went with him, instead of going in the Captain sahib's dogcart. That is because a doll is always a doll; as for glass eyes and such like, they perish."
And with that he crushed a handful of withered red poinsettias into the rubbish basket triumphantly.