But this was but for a moment; the next instant had hardly passed before her eyes fell, she hastily drew back her hands, and, with a heavy sigh, she shrank back to where Janet cowered in her chair, and stayed there until, one by one, the others went out, leaving the two friends the sole occupants of the room.
“Are they all gone?” whispered Janet at last, from where she had hidden her face in Patty’s breast.
“Yes; all—all,” said the agitated girl.
“I could not bear to look at the suffering old man,” said Janet, huskily. “It seemed to me as if he would be able to read in my face all that I felt, and so I acted like a frightened child, and he must have looked upon me as almost an idiot. But it is very horrible, Patty; and I seem to see the poor boy always before my eyes, with his white forehead all dabbled in blood, and his face pale and ghostlike. I dream of him so every night, and I know I feel as if something dreadful had happened. But what does it all mean?”
“Oh, hush—oh, hush!” said Patty; while Mrs Winks, who had just returned, buried her face in her apron, and seating herself upon the floor, as more lowly than a chair, she rocked herself to and fro, in the true sympathy she felt for the distressed girls.
“Why did they come here at all?” cried Janet, fiercely. “We were happy in our poor way before that; and now they have made us wretched for life. But Patty, Patty, this sight—this horrid vision—which I always have before me;” and as she spoke, she looked straight before her with hot and straining eyes. “What does it mean? I feel sometimes that I cannot bear it.”
Patty tried hard to soothe her companion; but her efforts seemed to be absolutely in vain, so wild and excited had Janet grown. At times her hearers shuddered as they listened to her exclamations, Mrs Winks even going so far as to glance over her shoulder to make sure that nothing of the kind described was really present.
Then for a time the poor girl calmed down, and Patty began to hope that her soothing words had taken effect; but soon there came a repetition, and Janet raised her head to stare straight before her, as she exclaimed:—
“It seems, at times, as if I could not bear it—as if it would send me mad; for he is in pain, I know—I feel. He is wounded—perhaps dead; and oh, Patty,” she whispered, her face, her voice softening as she leaned her forehead upon her companion’s shoulder, “I love him so—so dearly.”
Kissing her tenderly, smoothing her hair fondly the while, Patty tried to whisper comfort to the fluttering aching heart, beating so wildly within that deformed breast.