“Ughtred! Ughtred!” she called to him. “Come! She says—she says——”
She sat down upon a clump of heather and began to cry. She hid her face in her spare hands and broke into sobbing.
“Oh, Betty! No!” she gasped. “It's so long ago—it's so far away. You never came—no one—no one—came!”
The hunchbacked boy drew near. He had limped up on his stick. He spoke like an elderly, affectionate gnome, not like a child.
“Don't do that, mother,” he said. “Don't let it upset you so, whatever it is.”
“It's so long ago; it's so far away!” she wept, with catches in her breath and voice. “You never came!”
Betty knelt down and enfolded her again. Her bell-like voice was firm and clear.
“I have come now,” she said. “And it is not far away. A cable will reach father in two hours.”
Pursuing a certain vivid thought in her mind, she looked at her watch.
“If you spoke to mother by cable this moment,” she added, with accustomed coolness, and she felt her sister actually start as she spoke, “she could answer you by five o'clock.”