"Oh, you poor child!" she cried; "aren't you at home? I was just hurrying up to see whether I could be of any sort of help to you!"
"Any help?" echoed Joan, seeing at once, in the nodding blue plume in Ellen's hat, forebodings of horrible disaster.
"What, haven't you heard?" cried Ellen, pitying from the bottom of her heart the child's white face and terrified eyes.
"No! What? Oh, tell me quickly! What has happened? To father--"
"I don't know exactly myself," said Ellen. "That's what I was hurrying up to find out.... Your father...he's had some sort of fight with that horrible man Hogg in the High Street.... No, I don't know...But wait a minute...."
Joan was gone, scurrying through the Precincts, the paper bag with the fruit clutched tightly to her.
Ellen Stiles stared after her; her eyes were dim with kindness. There was nothing now that she would not do for that girl and her poor father! Knocked down to the ground they were, and Ellen championed them wherever she went. And now this! Drink or madness--perhaps both! Poor man! Poor man! And that child, scarcely out of the cradle, with all this on her shoulders! Ellen would do anything for them! She would go round later in the day and see how she could be useful.
She turned away. It was Ronder now who was "up"...and a little pulling- down would do him no sort of harm. There were a few little things she was longing, herself, to tell him. A few home-truths. Then, half-way down the High Street, she met Julia Preston, and didn't they have a lot to say about it all!
Meanwhile Joan, in another moment, was at her door. What had happened? Oh, what had happened? Had he been brought back dying and bleeding? Had that horrible man set upon him, there in the High Street, while every one was about? Was the doctor there, Mr. Puddifoot? Would there perhaps have to be an operation? This would kill her father. The disgrace.... She let herself in with her latch-key and stood in the familiar hall. Everything was just as it had always been, the clocks ticking. She could hear the Cathedral organ faintly through the wall. The drawing-room windows were open, and she could hear the birds, singing at the sun, out there in the Precincts. Everything as it always was. She could not understand. Gladys appeared from the kitchen.
"Oh, Gladys, here is the fruit.... Has father come in?"