"Do let us hurry home to Uncle Bob!" she pleaded, her voice pathetic, her eyes tired and dissatisfied.
Then silence, with the twilight, descended upon the voyaging company; and in a little while, coming noiselessly to the landing-place, they stepped ashore into the dewy, sweet-smelling weeds and the evening peace.
CHAPTER X.
A green lane, little used, but deeply rutted, led up from the wharf to the main street of Westings Landing. The village was silent, with no sign of life, except here and there a glimmer from a candle-lit window. From the pale sky overhead came the strange twang of swooping night-hawks, as of harp-strings suddenly but firmly plucked. In the intervals between these irregular and always unexpected notes was heard the persistent rhythm of a whippoorwill, softly threshing the dusk with his phantom song. Barbara felt the whole scene to be unreal, her companions unreal, herself most unreal of all. Could it be that she was the girl who had that same morning run away, that same morning made so brave and triumphant a start upon so splendid a venture? Now, somehow, she felt rather than understood the folly of it. The fact that she would have missed her Uncle Bob if she had succeeded in her plan took out of it all the zest, and it became to her a very ridiculous plan indeed. But her change of attitude was emotional rather than intellectual. She was convinced in mood, not in mind. Only she felt herself on the sudden a very small, tired girl, who deserved to be punished, and wanted to go to bed. Her conviction of childishness was heightened by the fact that Robert, who was walking just ahead with Doctor Jim, in grave discussion, seemed not only to have suddenly grown up, but to have quite forgotten her once imperious but now discredited existence. Her exhaustion, her reaction, her defeat, her disappointment in Robert, these all at once translated themselves into a sense of hopeless loneliness. She seized the large, kind hand of Doctor John, who walked in silence by her side, and clung to him.
Presently Doctor John felt hot tears streaming copiously down his fingers. Without a word, he snatched her up into his arms, carrying her as if she were a baby; and shaking with voiceless sobs, she buried her small, wet face in his comforting neck. She felt as if she wanted to cry wildly, deliciously, for hours and hours. But she managed to remember that even a very small girl may be heavy to carry over a rough road in the dusk, when the man who carries her has had a hard day's work chasing her. And, furthermore, she thought how very, very little, how poor and pitiful a heroine she would seem in Robert's eyes if he should chance to remember her existence and look back! She pulled herself together with a fierce effort, and choked down her sobs.
"Thank you so much, dear Doctor John!" she whispered in his ear. "I'm better now, and you must put me down. I'm too heavy."
"Tut, tut, sweetheart!" growled Doctor John, softly; "you bide where you are, and rest. You heavy!"
"But,"—she persisted, with a little earthward wriggle to show she meant it,—"I want to get down now, please! I don't want to look like quite such a baby. Doctor John!"
"Tut, tut!" but he set her down, nevertheless, and kept comforting hold of one cold little hand. Doctor John was quick in his sympathetic comprehension of women and children, and tolerant of what most men would account mere whim. In a moment he leaned down close to her ear, and whispered: