"We will certainly try to see him," Mary agreed, adding eagerly, "And oh, Dot—mayhap Jack will be of them."
"And perhaps Hugh," Dorothy said impulsively. Then quickly, as she saw the sudden change in Mary's face, "Whatever is the matter with Hugh Knollys, I wonder? He has not been to see his mother since we went to stop with her; and I have noticed that whenever his name is mentioned, you and Jack—and even his mother—look oddly. Has he done anything amiss?"
"Nothing, indeed, that I know of." And Mary lifted her cup of tea so that it hid her eyes for the moment.
"I have wished so often that he would come—I should like to see him once more. How long—how very long it seems since he left us last fall!" Dorothy sighed; and Mary knew it was not for Hugh, but because of all that had happened since his going.
CHAPTER XXVIII
"Oh, Mary, which one of them do you suppose is he?" whispered Dorothy, as the two girls hung over the balustrade of the upper hall, watching the figures entering through the outer door, all of them so muffled in storm-cloaks as to look precisely alike, save as to height.
The landlord, with much obsequious bustling, had hastened forward to meet them. His wife was beside him, and she had just summoned a servant to assist in taking the wet wrappings from the new arrivals as she stood courtesying before them.
"The rooms be aired, lighted, and fires made, as ordered, sir," Trask was saying.
In one hand he held aloft a clumsy brass candlestick holding three lighted candles, while the other hand was placed over his heart, as if that member needed to be repressed under the well-filled proportions of his ample waistcoat; and he was bowing with great servility before a figure whose stature far exceeded that of the other new-comers, but whose face, hidden by his hat, could not be seen by the eager onlookers at the top of the stairs.