“But you—how did you come here?” she asked, as they drew apart once more. “You . . . weren't . . . here?”—her brows contracting in a puzzled frown as she endeavoured to recall the incidents immediately preceding the bombing of the house. “We'd—we'd just gone to bed.”
“I was dining with the Herricks. The raid began just as I was leaving them, so Judson and I drove straight on here instead of going home.”
Sara pressed his hand.
“Bless you, dear!” she whispered quickly. Then, recollection returning more completely: “Tim? Is Tim safe?”
“Tim?”—sharply.
“He was upstairs. Where is Doctor Dick? Did he—”
“I'm not far off,” came Selwyn's voice, from the mouth of a dark cavity that had once been the study doorway. “Come over here—but step carefully. The floor's strewn with stuff.”
Garth piloted Sara skillfully across the debris that littered the floor, and they joined the group of shadowy figures huddled together in the doorless study.
“'Ware my arm!” warned Selwyn, as they approached. “It's broken, confound it!” He seemed, for the moment, oblivious of the pain.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Selwyn, finding herself physically intact, was keeping up an irritating moaning, interspersed with pettish diatribes against a Government that could be so culpably careless as to permit her to be bombed out of house and home; whilst Jane Crab, who had found and lit a candle, and recklessly stuck it to the table in its own grease, was bluffly endeavouring to console her.