The carriage drew up to the little platform. Miss Bennet alighted and Miss Bell hurried out to meet her.
"Oh, you dear thing!"—this was very extravagant for trained and graduated nurses—"to think I should meet you here! Isn't it just too nice!" It was Miss Bell who said that.
"Why, Mary Bell!" replied Miss Bennet. "How glad I am to see you! And what a surprise! You are the new nurse! And I never knew it. I'm just starting out on such an interesting case! A young girl, the dearest little thing, has escaped from the sanitarium, and I came out with the carriage to hunt her up. We had word last night that an old farmer—named Hobbs—had caught her. It may not be true, but I am going out there to see. It's a lovely ride. Can you come?"
The girl who escaped! Tavia remembered Sarah's story.
"Miss Bennet, I have a message for you," said Sam, very slowly. "It came in over the wire a half hour ago." And he handed her the yellow slip of paper.
Miss Bennet looked at it.
"Oh, my!" she gasped. "My mother!" and she dropped upon a nearby bench. "She—is—dying!"
Her face turned as white as the linen she wore. Instinctively Tavia ran for the water at the corner of the room. Miss Bell snatched up a paper and started to fan her.
"There, dear, don't faint," said the new nurse. "Of course, you must go to her."
"But! I must go after the escaped girl!" gasped Miss Bennet, and she again almost swooned. "Oh, my darling mother! All I have in the whole, wide world!"