Page:Georgie by Dorothea Deakin, 1906.djvu/98

"Georgie" should never quite forgive ourselves, should we? And fancy having to tell his mother the awful truth afterwards!"

"Don't you rather jump to fatal conclusions?" I asked mildly.

She shivered.

"Oh, Martin, we don't want to be haunted to our dying days by the memory of how we left the poor boy alone to his trouble, perhaps to his death, do we?"

I was silent. The pierrot in the distance sang sadly:

Perhaps this, with Drusilla's arguments, softened my heart. Something must have happened to weaken my brain, for I said, "Yes," and she picked up her boy and dragged me in to look for a railway guide.

Georgie had wired from Neath, a little town in South Wales, and I patiently planned out our tedious and disagreeable route. I couldn't think what had taken him to such an impossible place, a haunt 82