And now, the strain over, he leant back in the railway carriage and examined the telegram at leisure.
There was not much to be learnt from it; it was terse and unsatisfactory, like most messages of the kind—just sufficiently clear not to quell all hope, and yet undefined enough to give reins to the imagination. It contained these words: "An accident has happened. Both the young gentlemen have fallen into the pond, but neither are drowned. Come directly."
Those who have read and re-read such missives, and vainly endeavored to extract something from them, will best understand how Sir Everard tortured himself during the next quarter of an hour. Might not this be a part of the truth, and the rest concealed? Might it not be meant as a preparation?
But, no—unless the message told a deliberate falsehood, "neither were drowned." Why, then, bid him come directly, unless Miles's condition after his immersion in the water was all but hopeless. "A ducking will not hurt Humphrey," he reflected "so of course, it is Mile."
He thought of Miles's fragile appearance as he stood in the corn-field. How little he was fitted to cope with such an accident! Fragile and flushed, with traces of his late illness lingering about his lustrous eyes and colorless lips.
He worked himself up into a terrible state of anxiety as the train neared Wareham, and restlessly he laid the blame of the accident on everything and everybody.
What business had they at the pond? he angrily questioned; it was the most flagrant act of disobedience on Humphrey's part he had ever heard of.
For the moment, he felt as if he could never forgive the boy for such a barefaced breach of his command. Over and over again had Miles's health, life even, been endangered by Humphrey's heedlessness.