“Don’t bother. It’s because of the bishop, I suppose.”
“I don’t mean the bells. It’s like the old fable, told of in ‘The Mistletoe Bough,’ enacted in real life. If there were any deep chest about the premises——”
“Hold your peace, Johnny!—unless you want to drive me mad. If we come upon the child like that, I’ll—I’ll——”
I think he was going to say shoot himself, or something of that sort, for he was given to random speech when put to it. But at that moment Lena ran in dressed for church, in her white frock and straw hat with blue ribbons. She threw her hands on Tod’s knee and burst out crying.
“Joe, I don’t want to go to church; I want Hugh.”
Quite a spasm of pain shot across his face, but he was very tender with her. In all my life I had never seen Tod so gentle as he had been at moments during the last two days.
“Don’t cry, pretty one,” he said, pushing the fair curls from her face. “Go to church like a good little girl; perhaps we shall have found him by the time you come home.”
“Hannah says he’s lying dead somewhere.”
“Hannah’s nothing but a wicked woman,” savagely answered Tod. “Don’t you mind her.”
But Lena would not be pacified, and kept on sobbing and crying, “I want Hugh; I want Hugh.”