Page:Emily Climbs.pdf/214

 “Mrs. Will Bradshaw came to see me this evening. Luckily Aunt Ruth was out—I say luckily, for I don’t want Aunt Ruth to find out about my dream and its part in finding little Allan Bradshaw. This may be ‘sly,’ as Aunt Ruth would say, but the truth is that, sly or not sly, I could bear to have Aunt Ruth sniffing and wondering and pawing over the incident.

“Mrs. Bradshaw came to thank me. It embarrassed me—because, after all, what had to do with it? I don’t want to think of or talk of it at all. Mrs. Bradshaw says little Allan is all right again, now, though it was a week after they found him before he could sit up. She was very pale and earnest.

“‘He would have died there if you hadn’t come, Miss Starr—and would have died. I couldn’t have gone on living—not knowing—oh, I shall never forget the horror of those days. I to come and try to utter a little of my gratitude—you were gone when I came back that morning—I felt that I had been very inhospitable’

“She broke down and cried—and so did I—and we had a good howl together. I am very glad and thankful that Allan was found, but I shall never like to think of the way it happened.

“I had a lovely walk and prowl this evening in the pond graveyard. Not exactly a cheerful place for an evening’s ramble, one might suppose. But I always like to wander over that little westward slope of graves in the gentle melancholy of a fine autumn evening. I like to read the names on the stones and note the ages and think of all the loves and hates and hopes and fears that lie buried there. It was beautiful—and not sad. And all around were the red ploughed fields and the frosted, ferny wood-sides and all the old familiar things I have loved—and love more and more it seems to me, the older I grow.