Page:Hegan Rice--Mrs Wiggs of the cabbage patch.djvu/53

 An awkward pause followed, each waiting for the other to speak.

"I will come when you send for me," said Redding, without looking at her, and, turning abruptly, he strode down the steps and out into the dusk.

Lucy caught her breath and started forward, then she remembered the woman.

"What is it?" she asked listlessly.

The woman stepped forward, and put out a hand to steady herself against the door; her face was distorted, and her voice came in gasps.

"You said I was to come if I needed you. It's Jimmy, ma'am—he's dead!"

may be experience of suffering makes one especially tender to the heart-aches of others; at any rate, the article that Lucy Olcott wrote for the paper that