"Are you ready, Frank?" asked Edina, appearing in her grey plaid shawl and plain straw bonnet. "Good-bye, papa. I have been looking for you."
Dr. Raynor stooped to kiss his daughter quietly: he was not a demonstrative man. Hester was at the door: the boy held the horse's head. Frank helped Edina in; and, taking the reins, followed her.
"You will not stay too long, Edina?"
"Only the eight or nine days I am going for, papa."
They drove on. It was a lovely summer's day; and Edina, who enjoyed the sunshine, the balmy atmosphere, the blue sky, the waving trees, sat still and looked about her. Frank was unusually silent. In point of fact, the rumour he had just heard, touching Bell, had almost dumfounded him. Edina might have wondered at his prolonged silence, but that she was deep in thought herself.
"Frank," she began, as they neared the station, "I wish you would answer me a question."
He glanced quickly round at her, dread in his heart. Did the question concern the Bottomless Shaft?
"Do you know whether anything is wrong with papa?"
It was a great relief; and Frank, ever elastic, brightened up at once.
"Wrong with him? In what way, Edina?"