“I am taking you to see another young woman,” she said. “She was pretty too, and she had no parents. Her mother died five years ago, and her father, James Hodder, was lost in the storm, last spring. She was an easy prey, you see. Poor Hester! and only fifteen.”
Garde looked at the old woman in wonder. All this half muttered preface to something coming, served to make her heart beat so hard that she could hear it, painfully.
“What is it about her?” she asked, breathlessly.
Goody made no answer. She had reached the door of one of the huts, and pushing it open she entered, Garde, pale and large-eyed, close behind her.
“Ned—oh Ned!” came a half sob, half chortle of joy from somewhere in the darkness of the place. Garde felt shivers go down her entire form.
“Not Ned yet, my love,” said Goody, in a voice so cooing that Garde hardly knew it. “Presently, dear, presently. He is sure to come back to-night. Dear me, we must have a light and see how we’re doing.”
Garde had heard a little moan which Goody’s cooing had not sufficed to smother. Then there had been the sound of a stifled sob. Goody went to the dying embers in the chimney-place, to get a light for a tallow dip on which she had put her hand with unerring familiarity with the furnishings of the place. The voice, with tears and patience in its syllables, came again:
“He will come—back, to-night? He—didn’t come—last night. He hasn’t—come for a—week.”
“Oh yes, he will surely come to-night,” crooned Goody, at the fireplace. “But how is the little dollie?” Garde was leaning back against the door, heavily. Her eyes were staring into the utter darkness with which the place was filled. She felt the presence of a woman on a bed of motherhood. She was ready to sink on the floor, with terrible apprehensions. The woman on the bed made some heroic effort to calm herself, and to answer Goody’s question.
“She’s sleeping,” she said. “She was so cold, but I have got her warm again.”