“And I”—“And I,” said the others, and in half a minute the room was empty.
“Father,” whimpered Grannie, through the glass partition, “hadn't you better saddle the mare and see if any thing's going wrong with Kirry?”
“I was thinking the same myself, mother.”
“Come, then, away with you. The Lord have mercy on all of us!”
XVIII.
As soon as he was out of earshot Pete began to run. Within half an hour he was back at Elm Cottage. “She'll be home by this time,” he told himself, but he dared not learn the truth too suddenly. Creeping up to the hall window, he listened at the broken pane. The child was crying, and Nancy Joe was talking to herself, and sobbing as she bathed the little one.
“Bless its precious heart, it's as beautiful as the angels in heaven. I've bathed her mother on the same knee a hundred times. 'Deed have I, and a thousand times too. Mother, indeed! What sort of mothers are in now at all? She must have a heart-as hard as a stone to lave the like of it. Can't be a drop of nature in her.... Goodness, Nancy, what are saying for all? Kate is it? Your own little Kirry, and you blackening her! Aw, dear!—aw, dear! The bogh!—the bogh!”
Pete could not go in. He crept back to the cabin in the garden and leaned against it to draw his breath and think. Then he noticed that the dog was on the path with its long tongue hanging over its jaw. It stopped its panting to whine woefully, and then it turned towards the darker part of the garden.
“He's telling me something,” thought Pete.