Then she went out into the road and looked down its length of
noon-tide sunshine; the stage was not in sight. "Perhaps," she
thought, "it would take twenty minutes to get to the foot of the hill?
I'll not look down the road for ten minutes more." After a while she
said faintly, "Is it--coming?"
"No'm," David assured her, "Mrs. Richie, what does God eat?"
There was no answer.
"Does he eat us?"
"No, of course not."
"Why not?"
Helena lifted her head, suddenly, "It would take twenty-five minutes--
I'm sure it would."
She got up and walked a little way down the road, David tagging
thoughtfully behind her. There was no stage in sight. "David, run down
the hill to the turn, and look."
The little boy, nothing loath, ran, at the turn he shook his head, and
called back, "No'm. Mrs. Richie, He _must_, 'cause there's nothing
goes to heaven but us. Chickens don't," he explained anxiously. But
she did not notice his alarm.
"I'll wait another five minutes," she said. She waited ten; and then
another ten. "David," she said, in a smothered voice, "go; tell Maggie
he isn't coming--to dinner. You have your dinner, dear little boy.
I--don't want any."
She went up-stairs to her own room, and shut and locked the door. All
was over....
Yet when, in the early afternoon, the mail arrived, she had a pang of
hope that was absolute agony, for he had written.
There were only a dozen lines besides the "Dearest Nelly":
"I am just starting out West, rather unexpectedly, on business.
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