“‘No,’ said his mother, her face turning as white as her cap; ‘you must have been dreaming.’
“‘Dreaming!’ said I, rather indignantly; ‘you need not try to persuade me out of my senses—I saw him with my own eyes!—heard him with my own ears! and spoke to him! What else will convince you? He has gone back to the ship for John—I will breeze up the fire, put on the kettle, and get something cooked for their supper. After buffeting about in this storm, they will be cold and hungry.’
“Mrs. Arthur soon joined me. She could not believe that I had spoken to David, though she fancied that she had heard him herself, and was in a fever of anxiety, pacing to and fro the kitchen floor, and opening the door every minute to look out. I felt almost provoked by her want of faith.
“‘If the ship were in,’ she muttered, ‘he would have been in long ago, to tell me that all was safe. He knows how uneasy I always am when he and his brother are away. Betsy must have been deceived!’
“‘Mother, dear—indeed, what I tell you is true!’
“And I repeated to her for the twentieth time, perhaps, what David had said, and described his appearance.
“Hour after hour passed away, but no well-known footstep, or dearly loved voice, disturbed our lonely vigil. The kettle simmered drowsily on the hob; Mrs. Arthur, tired out with impatient fretting at her son’s delay, had thrown her apron over her head, and was sobbing bitterly. I began to feel alarmed; a strange fear seemed growing upon my heart, which almost led me to doubt the evidence of my senses—to fancy, in fact, that what I had seen might have been a dream. But, was I not there, wide awake? Had not his mother heard him speak as well as me? though her half-waking state had rendered the matter less distinct than it had been to me? I was not going to be reasoned out of my sanity in that way, because he did not choose to wait until I came down to open the door—which I thought rather unkind, when he must be well aware, that my anxiety for his safety must quite equal that of his mother.
“The red beams of the rising sun were tinging the white foam of the billows with a flush of crimson. The gale had lulled; and I knew that my father’s vessel sailed with the tide. I started from my seat, Mrs. Arthur languidly raised her head—
“‘My dear Betsy, will you just run across the cliff to the look-out house, and ask the sailors there if the Nancy came in last night? I cannot bear this suspense much longer.’
“‘I might have thought of that before,’ I said; and, without waiting for hat or shawl, I ran with breathless speed to the nearest station.