“Let us tell her,” said Mr. Ridgeway. “She will know what to do.”
He went to the door, and asked her to call her husband and come in.
Their joy was as great as it could be when they really accepted the wonderful fact. It seemed as though no one could go to sleep. Finally toward morning they settled down, but Mr. Ridgeway could not close his eyes, and Lawrence, although he obediently shut his, lay awake listening to his father’s uneasy breathing as he stared through the dawn at the beloved son that had been given back to him.
Lady Gray had warned them all not to tell the boys, as they might let the news slip before her sister was prepared for it. So breakfast was made possible by their appeals to Lawrence to stay on and help them build a plane.
As the time for Mrs. Ridgeway’s return approached, Lawrence grew almost unbearably nervous. What if she should not like him? He brushed and rebrushed his hair. He had asked Mr. Ridgeway to tell her all before they met. Lawrence wanted his first sight of that pictured face to be the face of his mother, not a stranger who would give him a friendly hand to shake.
So he ran, actually ran for refuge to his room when he heard the motor come up the winding drive. Gay voices and greetings floated up to his open window, but he could not look out.
Downstairs his father would now be taking his wife into the dim library. He would draw her over to the divan and seat her in the circle of his arm. Just as they had planned, he would tell her carefully and tenderly that her son, her own son was found at last, that not both little fellows had been doomed to the flood.
“But what if she doesn’t like me? What if she doesn’t want me?” Lawrence asked himself over and over.
Time dragged on; it seemed the day had gone past, yet his watch had counted off but half an hour. He could not stand it! He took out the case and, laying the picture on the table, gazed down into its tender eyes. Then, unable to bear it, he sank to his knees and put his face against the picture.
“Mother, what if you do not love me?” he asked, his heart starving.