"May 10th.—Schooner We're Here [the blood tingled all over him] Otto Svendson, 20, single, City, lost overboard."
Once more a low, tearing cry from somewhere at the back of the hall.
"She shouldn't ha' come. She shouldn't ha' come," said Long Jack, with a cluck of pity.
"Don't scrowge, Harve," grunted Dan. Harvey heard that much, but the rest was all darkness spotted with fiery wheels. Disko leaned forward and spoke to his wife, where she sat with one arm round Mrs. Cheyne, and the other holding down the snatching, catching, ringed hands.
"Lean your head daown—right daown!" he whispered. "It'll go off in a minute."
"I ca-an't! I do-don't! Oh, let me—" Mrs. Cheyne did not at all know what she said.
"You must," Mrs. Troop repeated. "Your boy's jest fainted dead away. They do that some when they're gettin' their growth. 'Wish to tend to him? We can git aout this side. Quite quiet. You come right along with me. Psha', my dear, we're both women, I guess. We must tend to aour men-folk. Come!"
The We're Heres promptly went through the crowd as a body-guard, and it was a very white and shaken Harvey that they propped up on a bench in an anteroom.
"Favours his ma," was Mrs. Troop's only comment, as the mother bent over her boy.
"How d'you suppose he could ever stand it?" she cried indignantly to Cheyne, who had said nothing at all. "It was horrible—horrible! We shouldn't have come. It's wrong and wicked! It—it isn't right! Why—why couldn't they put these things in the papers, where they belong? Are you better, darling?"