"I'll come," said Tom. "You shall look in one direction, and I in another. It's impossible that they can be very far away," and he took his place at Betty's side.
"How oppressive the day has become! or is it that I'm hurried, and a little flurried as well?" Betty said with an uneasy laugh. "I'm not a nervous woman, but I confess I'm rather frightened at the children not being here, and I'm blaming myself also for having left them so long."
"Depend upon it we shall see them coming over the bridge lugging an enormous basket of blackberries. Eva was full of importance over some secret scheme that she and Jack were going to carry out, and it may have taken longer than they calculated, as our expedition did this afternoon."
The commonplace suggestion soothed Betty without quite satisfying her. Tom threw up his head suddenly, scenting the hot air.
"The heat is explained also, I think, by the fact that there must be a bush fire not very far away. I smell the delicious pungency of its burning, and the coppery look of the clouds veiling the sun suggests smoke."
"A bush fire near here," said Betty, turning a white face on him. "You don't think that by any chance the children have wandered into the bush and——" her tongue clicked against the roof of her mouth, refusing to voice her fears.
"Oh, dear no," said Tom ready to bite out his own tongue at having hinted at the fire. "I feel that they have wandered far down the river, possibly to some haunt Jack thought a likely one for blackberries."
That suggestion did not comfort Betty greatly. What was more likely than that Eva, venturing too near the river, might have slipped in, and that Jack and she had drowned together in his effort to save her. and were they caught in the fire in the bush their fate would be no less horrible! The fear, kept to herself, was too terrible to bear.
"I'm frightened," she said, trying to smile off her terror. "I feel as if something frightful had happened to the children."
"It's scarcely like you to give way to nerves," Tom said with a smile. "You go along the road for a little way, and I will follow on by the river bank. Cooey when you want me to come back;" but he could not smother his own anxiety as he scrambled along.