Once within sight of shelter, Gaston had lifted up his voice in piteous weeping. Shaking and sobbing, he displayed the marks of ill-treatment that he had received at the hands of his so-called play-fellows that afternoon.
The sight of Andrew’s swollen nose and bleeding fingers, and the disturbed air pervading the whole company put the finishing stroke to Ruth’s alarm.
“You’ve never been quarrelling, I do hope,” she added, as fervently as if the bare possibility were not to be contemplated for a single instant by any sane person.
“Oh! haven’t we!” responded Jack, cheerfully; “and it’s done us all a jolly lot of good.”
“And made us awfully hungry,” added Phil.
And, to judge from the promptness with which they fell upon the good things provided for them, that afternoon’s misdoings had certainly not blunted the mis-doers’ appetites.
The girls, however, did not follow suit. Marygold was tired, and really very sad for Gaston, who was nowhere to be seen. Even Di was unusually subdued, whilst Fay and Phoena were thoroughly ashamed of the results of the first afternoon of taking care of themselves. Indeed, the latter’s sorrowful face, and yet more, her untasted tea, attracted Phil’s attention from his own plate.
“Hullo, Phoena,” he laughed, “whose funeral are you arranging for now? Why, your face is as long as all King Cole’s fiddlers put together.”
Phoena started. She had been very far away in thought-land just then.
“I was thinking,” she began.