had
said: "Look at here, Andrew, old fellow; you'd better go home and
rest a bit. We'll look all the harder while you're gone, and maybe
she'll be found when you wake up."
"Who will be found?" Andrew asked, with a dazed look. He reeled as
if he were drunk.
"Ain't had anything, has he?" one of the men whispered.
"Not a drop to my knowledge."
Andrew's lips trembled perceptibly; his forehead was knitted with
vacuous perplexity; his eyes reflected blanks of unreason; his whole
body had an effect of weak settling and subsidence. The man who
worked next to him in the cutting-room at Lloyd's, and had searched
at his side indefatigably from the first, stole a tender hand under
his shoulder. "Come along with me, old man," he said, and Andrew
obeyed.
When Fanny and Eva came in with the child, he lay prostrate on the
bed, and scarcely seemed to breathe. A great qualm of fear shot over
Fanny for a second. His father had died of heart-disease.
"Is he--dead?" she gasped to Eva.
"No, of course he ain't," said Eva. "He's asleep; he's wore out.
Andrew, Andrew, Andrew, wake up! She's found, Andrew; Ellen's
found." But Andrew did not stir.
"He is!" gasped Fanny, again.
"No, he ain't. Andrew, Andrew Brewster, wake up, wake up! Ellen's
here! She's found!"
Fanny put Ellen down, and bent over Andrew and listened. "No, I can
hear him breathe," she cried. Then she kissed him, and leaned her
mouth close to his ear. "Andrew!" she said, in a voice which Eva and
Ellen had never heard before. "Andrew, poor old man, wake up; she's
found! Our child is found!"
When Andrew still did not wake, but only stirred, and moaned
faintly, Fanny lifted Ellen onto the bed. "Kiss poor father, and
wake him," she told her.
Ellen, whose blue eyes were big with fright and wonder, whose lips
were quivering, and whose little body was vibrating with the strain
of her nerves, laid her soft cheek against her father's rough, pale
one, and stole a little arm under his neck. "Father, wake up!" she
called out in her little, trembling, sweet voice, and that reached
Andrew Brewster in the depths of his own physical inertness. He
opened his eyes and looked at the child, and the light came into
them, and then the sound of his sobbing filled the house and reached
the people out in the yard, and an echo arose from them. Gradually
the crowd dispersed. Jim Tenny, before he drove away, went to the
door and spoke to Eva.
"Anything I can do?" he asked, w
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