“Has Digby been thrown? is he hurt? where is he?” she asked, hurriedly, trying to go out into the hall, but her elder daughters and Miss Apsley held her back, thinking that it was much better to keep her quiet till they could ascertain what had really happened.
Kate had followed her father out of the room; she thought that she would at once set off to find Digby; she flew up into her room to put on her walking things.
Into the hall speedily hurried Mrs Carter, and nurse, and all the servants. Everybody was asking questions which no one was able to answer. Neither John Pratt nor any of the other men had yet come back.
Mr Heathcote, telling Thomas the footman to attend on him, seized a thick stick, and set out in the direction he understood Digby had gone with the pony. He had no definite plan; he forgot that it would have been wiser had he remained at home to have directed the search, and heard the reports of those sent to look for his son.
Kate came down prepared for her expedition soon after her father had gone out and disappeared in the darkness. She wanted to follow, but she did not know which way he had gone, and Alesbury, who thought that she ought not to go out, would not tell her.
“I will go,” she exclaimed vehemently; “I have as good eyes as anybody, and I am as likely to see him.”
Eleanor and Mary came out several times to make inquiries, and then Alesbury and Mrs Carter were summoned into the drawing-room to state all they knew and had heard. All anybody could say was, that Master Digby galloped off on his new pony, and that when John Pratt and the other men found that he did not come back, they set off to look for him. They must have missed his pony, because the pony came back by itself.
As soon as Kate saw that she was not watched, she opened the hall-door, and slipping out, closed it behind her unperceived. Then down the steps she went, and away she ran as fast as her light feet could carry her along the path she had seen Digby go. She could not bear to think that any very serious injury had happened to him, but she fancied that he had been thrown from his pony and stunned; or, perhaps, that his ankle might have been sprained or broken, and that he was, in consequence, unable to walk home.
The sky had become overcast and the night was very dark. Poor little Kate ran on, looking anxiously on every side and calling out Digby’s name.—Snow, too, began to fall, and came down in large flakes on hat face. For herself she did not care, she did not feel the cold, but she thought of dear Digby, lying on the bare ground; and, perhaps, unable to move or to call out. Perhaps he might have attempted to leap, and got thrown, or his pony might have stumbled. Still it appeared so sure-footed and sagacious a beast, that that could scarcely have happened.
“Oh Digby, Digby, where are you?” she every now and then cried out in a piteous tone.