“Now, what on earth do you mean?”
“I wish I knew what. All I can tell you is, that when his mother received that letter from William last month, saying his return was delayed, a sort of foreboding seized hold of me, an apprehension that he would never come. I try to shake it off, but I cannot. Each day, as the days come round, only serves to make it stronger.”
“Don’t you think a short visit to Droitwich would do you good, Ellin?” cried Tod, which was our Worcestershire fashion of recommending people to the lunatic asylum.
“Just listen to him, Johnny!” she exclaimed, with a laugh.
“Yes, ‘just listen to him’—and just listen to yourself, Miss Ellin, and see which talks the most sense,” he retorted. “Have you got over those dreams yet?”
Ellin turned her face to him quickly. “Who told you anything about that, Aunt Hester?”
Tod nodded. “It’s true, you know.”
“Yes, it is true,” she slowly said. “I have had those strange dreams for some weeks now; I have them still.”
“That William Brook is lost?”
“That he is lost, and that we are persistently searching for him. Sometimes we are seeking for him in Timberdale, sometimes at Worcester—in America, in France, in places that I have no knowledge of. There always seems to be a sadness connected with it—a sort of latent conviction that he will never be found.”