Their eyes met; his shifting, beady eyes were held forcibly with many a twitching, by her gray eyes. For two awful seconds they stood taking farewell of each other.
“No,” he repeated, dropping his glance.
Then he put out his hand with a gesture of finality, “I’m going now. I don’t know when–or–well, whether I’ll come–” He picked up the package. He was going down the steps with the package in his hands when he heard the patter of little feet and a little voice calling:
“Daddy–daddy–” and repeated, “daddy.”
He did not turn, but walked quickly to the sidewalk. As far as he could hear, that childish voice called to him.
And he heard the cry in his dreams.
241CHAPTER XXIII
HERE GRANT ADAMS DISCOVERS HIS INSIDES
Laura Van Dorn stood watching her husband pass down the street. She silenced the child by clasping her close in the tender motherly arms. No tears rose in the wife’s eyes, as she stood looking vacantly down the street at the corner where her husband had turned. Gradually it came to her consciousness that a crowd was gathering by her father’s house. She remembered then that she had seen a carriage drive up, and that three or four men followed it on bicycles, and then half a dozen men got out of a wagon. Even while she stared, she saw the little rattletrap of a buggy that Amos Adams drove come tearing up to the curb by her father’s house. Amos Adams, Jasper and little Kenyon got out. Even amidst the turmoil of her emotions, she moved mechanically to the street, to see better, then she clasped Lila to her breast and ran toward her father’s home.
“What is it?” she cried to the first man she met at the edge of the little group standing near the veranda steps.