"It was a wet night, and it was a very dark one, and such strange sounds
fill a wood at night, and—oh, I hope she kept away from the river!
If anything chased her, and she ran, and in the darkness fell in—
O Betty, Betty!"
Then "Gorlay at last!" she cried in intense relief as she recognized the well-known landmarks. Long before the train could possibly draw up, she got up and stood by the door with the handle in her hand, a sense of strangeness, of unreality, growing upon her. She felt as though she were some one else, some one older and more experienced, who was accustomed to moving amidst tragedies and the serious events of life. Even the old familiar platform, the white palings, the 'bus and the drowsy horses that she knew so well, seemed to her to have changed too, and to wear quite a different aspect.
"I feel like a person just waking out of a dream, not knowing whether it is dream or reality," she thought to herself as she opened the door and stepped out on to the platform. "I suppose I am not dreaming?"
But as she stood there for a moment trying to collect herself, Weller, the 'busman, came up to her, and he was real enough, and his anxious face was no dream-face.
"Good-morning, missie," he said sympathetically. "I'm sorry enough, I'm sure, to see you come home on such an errant. 'Tis wisht, sure enough."
Kitty was startled. She thought he was referring to Betty, and wondered how he could know of her escapade. "You knew she was gone?" she asked anxiously.
The man looked shocked. "Gone! Is she, poor lady? Law now, miss, you don't say so! I hadn't heard it. She was just conscious when I called fore this morning to inquire, and they 'ad 'opes that she'd rally."
"Then they have found her; but—but is she ill? Did she get hurt?—the river!—O Weller, do tell me quickly. I came home on purpose to go to look for her. Is she very ill?" Poor Kitty was nearly exhausted with anxiety and the shocks she had received.
Weller looked puzzled. "Why," he said slowly, "I never heard nothing about any river. She was took ill and fell down in the room, missie. Haven't you heard? They told me they was going to tellygraff for you so soon as the office was open, 'cause your poor aunt said your name once or twice—almost the only words they've been able to make out since she was took ill; and with the master away and you the eldest, they thought you ought to be sent for."
Then the rest of Betty's letter came back to her mind, and as the importance of it was borne in on her, Kitty's heart sank indeed in the face of such a double trouble.