“You’ll stay with her if she wants you?” he asked.
“Yes, I’ll stay”; and she went away to get her hat.
As she mounted the stairs in Holloway, the door of Flat G opened as if some one within had been listening for her, and a stealthy head peeped out. Then a hand beckoned.
Hal crossed the landing and went inside the door. The poor music-teacher’s face was swollen almost past recognition with crying.
“What am I to do?… what am I to do?” she moaned, rocking herself backwards and forwards. “There was only one thing in all the world that made my life worth living, and now it is gone.”
She sobbed bitterly for a few minutes, softened by Hal’s sympathetic presence, then she told her brokenly:
“They’re all mourning. Every single soul in this dreary building. Considering he never left the flat, it’s wonderful—wonderful; but he knew all the children, and they all knew him. And if you know the children you know the fathers and mothers.
“Little Splodgkins, as we always called him, has been sitting like a small stone effigy on the stairs outside his door. He has patrolled the whole staircase for days, keeping the other children quiet. I told Mr. Hayward, and he sent him a message. He said, ‘Tell him to grow up a fine man, and fight for his country, and not to forget me before we meet again.’ The little chap fought back his tears when I gave him the message, and he said: ‘Tell him, I thaid dammit, tho I will.’
“But they’re young, and they’ve got each other, most of the other folks here, and I’ve got nothing—nothing. Miss Pritchard, I can’t go on again the same—I can’t—I can’t.”
“You must help Miss Hayward, at any rate for a time,” Hal told her; “if you didn’t you would be failing him now; and even little Splodgkins doesn’t mean to do that.”