"It ought to have been here by this time," she thought with
a tightening of her lips. Perhaps he was away? Her heart sank at that;
but how absurd! Suppose he was. What did a few hours' waiting amount
to? She had waited thirteen years.
For another hour she watched in the heat and silence of the garden;
then started to hear Sarah, at her elbow, saying that dinner was on
the table.
"Very well," she answered impatiently. "I'll wait another five
minutes," she said to herself. But she waited ten. When she sat down
in the dining-room, she ate almost nothing. Once she asked Sarah if
she knew how long it took for a despatch to come from Philadelphia to
Old Chester. Sarah gaped at the question, and said she didn't know as
she'd ever heard.
In the afternoon, with covert glances out of the window, she kept
indoors and tried to put her mind on practical things: the
arrangements with her landlord for cancelling the lease; the packing
and shipping of furniture. At last, on a sudden impulse, she said to
herself that she would go and meet David as he came home from school--
and call at the telegraph-office.
In the post-office, where the telegraph bound Old Chester to the outer
world, Mrs. Minns, looking up from her knitting, saw the tense face at
the delivery window.
"No letters for you, Mrs. Richie," she said; then she remembered the
telegram that had by this time interested all Old Chester, and got up
and came forward, sympathetically curious.
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