Eliza, narrow-minded and pre-eminently puritanical in her views, was the very last person in the world whose help he would have thought of requisitioning in the present circumstances.
Peter nodded.
"Yes. I've only met her two or three times, but I'm quite sure she is the right person. I believe," he added, smiling gently, "that I know your mother better than you do, Sandy."
And it would appear that this was really the case. For when, in the small hours of the morning, the trio reached Trevarthen Wood and Sandy had effected an entry and aroused his mother, there followed a brief interview between Peter and Mrs. McBain, from which the latter emerged with her grim mouth all tremulous at the corners and her keen eyes shining through a mist of tears.
Sandy and Nan were waiting together in the hall, and both looked up anxiously as she bore down upon them.
To the ordinary eye she may have appeared merely a very plain old woman, arrayed in a hideous dressing-gown of uncompromising red flannel. But to Nan, as the bony arms went round her and the Scottish voice, harsh no longer but tender as an old song, murmured in her ears, she seemed the embodiment of beautiful, consoling motherhood, and her flat chest a resting-place where weary heads might gladly lie and sorrowful hearts pour out their grief in tears.
"Dinna greet, ma bairnie," crooned Eliza. "Ma wee bairnie, greet nae mair."
CHAPTER XXXIV
THE WHITE FLAME
It was not till late in the afternoon of the day following upon her flight from Mallow that Nan and Peter met again. He had, so Sandy informed her, walked over to the Court in order to see Kitty.