Page:Further Chronicles of Avonlea (1920).djvu/213

Rh who saw her white, rigid face that day ever forgot the sight.

“You have news for me,” she said.

They looked at each other, each man mutely imploring his neighbor to speak.

“You need not fear to tell me,” said Thyra calmly. “I know what you have come to say. My son is drowned.”

“We don’t know that, Mrs. Carewe,” said Abel Blair quickly. “We haven’t got the worst to tell you — there’s hope yet. But Joe Raymond’s boat was found last night, stranded, bottom up, on the Blue Point sand shore, forty miles down the coast.”

“Don’t look like that, Thyra,” said Carl White pityingly. “They may have escaped — they may have been picked up.”

Thyra looked at him with dull eyes.

“You know they have not. Not one of you has any hope. I have no son. The sea has taken him from me — my bonny baby!”

She turned and went back to her desolate home. None dared to follow her. Carl White went home and sent his wife over to her.

Cynthia found Thyra sitting in her accustomed chair. Her hands lay, palms upward, on her lap. Her eyes were dry and burning. She met Cynthia’s compassionate look with a fearful smile.

“Long ago, Cynthia White,” she said slowly,