CHAPTER SIXTEEN
ITS LIBERATION
Rob watched the fields which bordered Fayre, and the splendid, bare-boughed elms fly past the window against which she pressed her face, eager for the first glimpse of the station. It seemed to her that she had been gone for months; she wondered at finding them the same fields and the same elms which she had seen on her departure—another Rob was returning to them, who, she vaguely felt, must be welcomed by changes in the surroundings of her childhood corresponding to those within herself.
There was no one to meet her at the station; she had been too uncertain of her return to announce it, and, leaving her single, but insistent, piece of baggage at the station, she hurried to the little grey house.
She opened the door and came in quietly, yet not so quietly but that Prue heard her step, and came tumbling out of the sitting-room, crying: "Rob, Rob! Rob's come!" in an ecstasy of joyous excitement.
Wythie nearly tripped up her mother in her haste to follow Prue, but Rob brushed past them both, throwing her arms around her darling Mardy, and hugging her close, crying with joy at getting back to her, and for grief of the loneliness of finding her in her widow's black.
"Rob, my dear, precious girl, I'm so thankful you're here I can't care how your mission ended," cried Mrs. Grey, holding Rob off at arm's length to see her better, and folding her closer than before. "I have seen you crushed by trolleys, lost, weary, frightened, till I could not forgive myself for letting you go."
"Dear Mardy-goosie, you see I'm all right, and you'd better care how my mission ended, for it's worth caring about," cried Rob. "You see I didn't come home on my shield, so maybe you can guess who's the victor."
"Rob, have you good news?" cried Wythie.
"I have a lovely old gentleman coming up here to see the invention, and he is positively going to make an offer for it, but he couldn't tell how much it would be. The only thing he could say was that it would be considerably more than Mr. Marston's offer," said Rob, busying herself with her coat-buttons, and trying to speak demurely.
"You splendid, splendid Rob!" cried Prue, throwing herself on her sister's neck in a rapture.