"But the children—why aren't they down?" said grandfather again.
Mother hesitated—
"It is rather late for them," she said. "The girls have been a long walk and are tired."
She did not know what to say, poor thing. She had not dared to let the three children come into the drawing-room, for fear their white faces and red eyes should make grandfather find out that there was something wrong, and indeed neither Celia, nor Denny, nor Fritz, would have been able to stay still in the room for five minutes. They were peeping out of the nursery every few seconds, running along to the end of the balcony, and straining their eyes and ears in trying to see or hear anything coming in the shape of good news.
Long, long afterwards they used to speak in the nursery, with deep breaths, of "that terrible evening when Herr Baby was lost."
But it was, of course, the worst for poor mother. It was bad enough in the nursery, where the tea, that nobody had cared to touch, was set out as neatly as usual on the table; the chairs drawn round, the one that Baby always had with a footstool on it—to make up for there being no high chair at the Villa—in its place, though the well-known, funny little figure was not perched on it. And Lisa, with a face swollen so that no one would have known her, fussing away to have the kettle boiling, so that her darling should have some hot tea as soon as ever he came in—for she wouldn't allow but that he would soon come in, though sad little stories kept running through Celia's and Denny's heads about children that had been lost and never found, or found only when it was no longer they themselves but only their poor little bodies, drowned, perhaps, or "choked in the snow," as Denny said. And she got rather cross when Celia reminded her that there was no snow, so it couldn't be that, any way.
All this was bad enough, but still they were free to talk about their fears, and to cry if they felt inclined, and to keep running to the window or the door. But for poor mother, as you can fancy, it was much worse. There she had to sit smiling and talking as if everything were quite nice and comfortable, not only for the sake of the friends who had come to dine with them, but still more for poor grandfather's sake, who kept growing more and more fidgety and put out, and at the bottom of his heart, though he would not own it even to himself, really frightened and anxious.
At last his patience was exhausted.
"May," he said, speaking across the fireplace to mother. She was talking to the lady beside her, and did not at first hear him. "May," said grandfather again, and if the children had been in the room I think his voice would have made them jump, "it is using our friends very badly to keep them waiting so long for dinner. Be so good as to ring again and tell the servants we will not wait any longer."
Poor mother—she looked up—it was all she could do not to burst into tears!