Two weeks later, clad in deepest mourning, the twins trudged into town. At Colonel Kent's there was no one in authority to receive them and their errand was of too much importance to be communicated to either physician or nurse. Their own unopened letter lay on the library table, with many others.
Subdued and chastened in demeanour, they went to Madame Bernard's and waited in funereal silence until Madame came down.
"How do you—" she began, then stopped. "Why, what is the matter?"
"We ran over him," explained Romeo, suggestively inclining his head in the general direction of Kent's. "Don't you remember?"
"And if he dies, we've killed him," put in Juliet, sadly.
"We'll be murderers if he dies," Romeo continued, "and we ought to be hung."
In spite of her own depression and deep anxiety, Madame saw how keenly the tragedy had affected the twins. "Why, my dears!" she cried. "Do you think for a minute that anybody in the world blames you?"
"We ought to be blamed," Romeo returned, "because we did it."
"But not on purpose—you couldn't help it."
"We could have helped it," said Juliet, "by not celebrating. We had no business to buy an automobile, or, even if we had, we shouldn't have gone out in it until we learned to run it."