Andy did, anyway.
He looked down at the tomb of a man forgotten, whom nobody had thought about for a couple of hundred years, and he knew that not only are there no private black eyes in the immediate present, but that they influence eternity.
He felt very small, did Andy, as he trudged back to the house in the growing morning; but when the immense truths come quite near to us we all feel little.
Before he reached the door, an odour of burning reached him, floating at first almost impalpable in the sweet air, though definite enough when it had once been perceived.
He stood quite still for a second, then he began to run quickly towards the lane, and in the direction of Mrs. Simpson’s cottage.
He tore along, forgetful of his aching arm, and with a horrible picture of Sally and Jimmy being burned to death before his mind’s eye. As he ran, he planned rapidly what he should do in case the front door were locked and the sleeping Mrs. Simpson still unconscious of danger, and with his heart thumping against his side, he raced round the corner to see Mrs. Simpson seated calmly on a garden seat in a print dress and silk mantle, with the two children in woollen rugs and antimacassars beside her.
Andy was ill, so the run and the odd revulsion of feeling left him rather faint and breathless. He sat down on the end of the garden seat with the rest, unable to speak.
And, really, it was an odd sight if any one had been there to see. Andy in crushed and crumpled evening dress, with his hair in a curly bush on his forehead, staring wildly at Mrs. Simpson, while Sally’s anxious little face between them was turned first to one and then the other; while the boy tried to kick the leg of the seat with his bare feet and shouted—
“Give me my boots! I want my boots!”
“It’s out,” said Mrs. Simpson placidly, in response to Andy’s appearance, which seemed to demand something. “The partition between the two rooms caught fire from the back of the stove. They never ought to have put one in there. We might all have been burnt to death in our beds.”