Mistress McIntyre shook her head, composedly.
"Oh, no. It is not finding him in a hurry they will be. I will be hearing Clara skirling in the night. She iss the daughter of my son Angus. He will be marrying a Wilson and the Wilsons will always be making a stramash over eferything. The poor thing will be worrying that she was not good enough to the little lad, but it would always be spoiling him she wass, and him that full of mischief. I will not be of much use to her... I haf not the second sight. You will be having a bit of that yourself, I am thinking, oh, yess."
"No... no," said Emily, hurriedly. She could not help recalling a certain incident of her childhood at New Moon, of which she somehow never liked to think.
Old Mistress McIntyre nodded sagely and smoothed her white apron.
"It will not be right for you to be denying it, my dear, for it iss a great gift and my Cousin Helen four times removed will be having it, oh, yess. But they will not be finding little Allan, oh, no. Clara will be loving him too much. It iss not a fery good thing to be loving any one too much. God will be a jealous God, oh, yess; it is Margaret McIntyre who knows it. I will be having six sons once, all fery fine men and the youngest would be Neil. He was six-feet-two in hiss stockings and there would be none of the others like him at all. There would be such fun in him... he would always be laughing, oh, yess, and the wiling tongue of him would be coaxing the birds off the bushes. He will be going to the Klondyke and he will be getting frozen to death out there one night, oh, yess. He will be dying while I wass praying for him. I haf not been praying since. Clara will be feeling like that now... she will be saying God does not hear. It iss a fery strange thing to be a woman, my dears, and to be loving so much for nothing. Little Allan was a fery pretty baby. He will be having a fat little brown face and fery big blue eyes, and it is a pity he will not be turning up, though they will not be finding my Neil in time, oh, no. I will be leaving Clara alone and not vexing her with comforting. I wass always the great hand to leave people alone... without it would be when I spanked the King. It iss Julia Hollinger who will be darkening council by words without knowledge. It iss the foolish woman she iss. She would be leaving her husband because he will not be giving up a dog he liked. I am thinking he wass wise in sticking to the dog. But I will always be getting on well with Julia because I will have learned to suffer fools gladly. She will enjoy giving advice so much and it will not be hurting me whatefer because I will never be taking it. I will be saying good- bye to you now, my dears, and it iss fery glad I am to haf seen you and I will be wishing that trouble may nefer sit on your hearthstones. And I will not be forgetting either that you listened to me very polite, oh, yess. I will not be of much importance to anybody now... but once I spanked the King."
CHAPTER 15. "THE THING THAT COULDN'T"
When the door had closed behind Mistress McIntyre, the girls got up and dressed rather laggingly. Emily thought of the day before her with some distaste. The fine flavour of adventure and romance with which they had started out had vanished, and canvassing a country road for subscriptions had suddenly become irksome. Physically, they were both tireder than they thought.
"It seems like an age since we left Shrewsbury," grumbled Ilse as she pulled on her stockings.
Emily had an even stronger feeling of a long passage of time. Her wakeful, enraptured night under the moon had seemed in itself like a year of some strange soul-growth. And this past night had been wakeful also, in a very different way, and she had roused from her brief sleep at its close with an odd, rather unpleasant sensation of some confused and troubled journey... a sensation which old Mistress McIntyre's story had banished for a time, but which now returned as she brushed her hair.
"I feel as if I had been wandering... somewhere... for hours," she said. "And I dreamed I found little Allan... but I don't know where. It was horrible to wake up feeling that I HAD known just immediately before I woke and had forgotten."
"I slept like a log," said Ilse, yawning. "I didn't even dream. Emily, I want to get away from this house and this place as soon as I can. I feel as if I were in a nightmare... as if something horrible were pressing me down and I couldn't escape from it. It would be different if I could DO anything... help in any way. But since I can't, I just want to escape from it. I forgot it for a few minutes while the old lady was telling her story... heartless old thing! SHE wasn't worrying one bit about poor little lost Allan."
"I think she stopped worrying long ago," said Emily dreamily. "That's what people mean when they say she isn't right. People who don't worry a little never ARE right... like Cousin Jimmy. But that was a great story. I'm going to write it for my first essay... and later on I'll see about having it printed. I'm sure it would make a splendid sketch for some magazine, if I can only catch the savour and vivacity she put into it. I think I'll jot down some of her expressions right away in my Jimmy-book before I forget them."
"Oh, drat your Jimmy-book!" said Ilse. "Let's get down... and eat breakfast if we have to... and get away."
But Emily, revelling again in her story-teller's paradise, had temporarily forgotten everything else.
"Where IS my Jimmy-book?" she said impatiently. "It isn't in my bag... I know it was here last night. Surely I didn't leave it on that gate-post!"
"Isn't that it over on the table?" asked Ilse.
Emily gazed blankly at it.
"It can't be... it IS... how did it get there? I KNOW I didn't take it out of the bag last night."
"You must have," said Ilse indifferently.
Emily walked over to the table with a puzzled expression. The Jimmy-book was lying open on it, with her pencil beside it. Something on the page caught her eye suddenly. She bent over it.
"Why don't you hurry and finish your hair?" demanded Ilse a few minutes later. "I'm ready now... for pity's sake, tear yourself from that blessed Jimmy-book for long enough to get dressed!"
Emily turned around, holding the Jimmy-book in her hands. She was very pale and her eyes were dark with fear and mystery.
"Ilse, look at this," she said in a trembling voice.
Ilse went over and looked at the page of the Jimmy-book which Emily held out to her. On it was a pencil sketch, exceedingly well done, of the little house on the river shore to which Emily had been so attracted on the preceding day. A black cross was marked on a small window over the front door and opposite it, on the margin of the Jimmy-book, beside another cross, was written:
"Allan Bradshaw is here."
"'What does it mean?" gasped Ilse. "Who did it?"
"I... don't know," stammered Emily. "The writing... is MINE."
Ilse looked at Emily and drew back a little.
"You must have drawn it in your sleep," she said dazedly.
"I can't draw," said Emily.
"Who else could have done it? Mistress McIntyre couldn't... you know she couldn't. Emily, I never heard of such a strange thing. Do you think... do you think... he can be there?"
"How could he? The house must be locked up... there's no one working at it now. Besides, they must have searched all around there... he would be looking out of the window... it wasn't shuttered, you remember... calling... they would have seen... heard... him. I suppose I must have drawn that picture in my sleep... though I can't understand how I did it... because my mind was so filled with the thought of little Allan. It's so strange... it frightens me."
"You'll have to show it to the Bradshaws," said Ilse.
"I suppose so... and yet I hate to. It may fill them with a cruel false hope again... and there CAN'T be anything in it. But I daren't risk NOT showing it. YOU show it... I can't, somehow. The thing has upset me... I feel frightened... childish... I could sit down and cry. If he SHOULD have been there... since Tuesday... he would be dead of starvation."