“You have been very kind, doctor,” she said, when Mr. Haggarty was placed inside the carriage and the doctor was preparing to go with him. “I take it almost as if it were done for papa, they were such friends. You’ll come again, will you not, some brighter day, and let us thank you?”
The doctor answered with one of those quick looks in her face which Thorndyke knew so well.
“Some one ought to come very soon and see how you are,” he said. “This has been rather trying for you, Miss Halliday.”
CHAPTER XVIII.
Poor Tom! It was a dark to-morrow to which he had invited Aleck, and darker still the days that followed, that he had thought would be full of holiday enjoyment! Could it be true that his father was gone? Gone! What did that mean! Oh, if it only were not true! If every one were mistaken, or had told him false!
It seemed to him he could never see the boys again. But Aleck would not leave him to that very long, and Tom really felt the first touch of comfort when he heard him asking for him at the door.
“Oh, but you don’t know anything about it, Aleck; you don’t understand! No one can understand, until it come, how terrible it seems.”
“And isn’t that the very way I can understand?”