“I think I know how I’ll manage,” said the Captain’s wife. “I’ll go to the shipping offices myself. No”—she interrupted herself as Lucy made a hasty movement—“you mustn’t think of coming with me. With your face, my dear, you’d never get anything out of them while there was the faintest chance of their being able to hold it back. But perhaps,” she added turning to Tom, “this young gentleman will come with me to show me the way, and to take care of me over those busy City crossings, for I recollect that when I once went with the Captain to the office, there was some clever steering to be done ere we got there!”
Up to this point nobody had remembered that Mrs. Grant did not know Tom. Now Lucy recollected herself and introduced the boy as an employee in Charlie’s office, and at present a member of the Challoner household.
Mrs. Grant beamed on him.
“This is most fortunate,” said she. “For I’m sure your masters will give you an off day to help me find out whether there’s any news of their Mr. Challoner—and of my Captain!”
“I’m sure they will!” cried Tom. “The chiefs are always asking whether we have heard anything. Still I’ll have to go to the office first to tell them why I’m wanting leave of absence.” He suited the action to the word, bustling away, saying, “Wait till I come back—and I’ll be back as fast as I can fly!”
When he was gone, Mrs. Grant and Lucy had time for a little quiet talk. It was very easy for Mrs. Grant to say that on the platform she had recognised Lucy from her old photograph, but she did not add that she was shocked at the change visible in her, the manifold signs of nerve strain and exhaustion.
“If she has much more waiting, she’ll set sail herself for a far-off shore,” thought the good woman. Yet when she found that Lucy had regular duties at the Institute, she would not allow Lucy to dream of absenting herself for her sake.
“No, no,” she said. “I did not come here to upset your regular ways. For one thing, if you begin to change those, people will realise how anxious you are, and then they’ll pull long faces to you, and that will make everything still harder and worse to bear. It’s wise to keep a still sough, as we say in the North. You just go about your usual day’s work, and when you come home, you’ll find me and the young gentleman returned and waiting, and whatever we have heard, you shall hear it all—honour bright, I promise you.”
Lucy had her full share of the sweet womanly instinct of obedience. It is an instinct which is often strong in proportion to the strength of the whole nature. It works so naturally and grows so strong in the fortunate daughter and the happy wife, that it adds terribly to the sense of disaster when the props to which it twines are withdrawn and it is left trailing on the ground. Lucy was quite ready to succumb to the genial domination of this wholesome kindly woman, already her sister in suspense and who might so soon be also her sister in sorrow. She went upstairs before she went away, and came down saying that poor Tom’s mischance with his gas-burner had made her so nervous that she had carefully tested all the upstairs burners.
“Somebody else might have made a similar mistake,” said she, “but they are all right.” So she went off, taking Hugh to the Kindergarten on her way.