What the Cricket Heard

Two hours later Donald stumbled, like a strong man physically played
out, up the path to the cottage.

Ethel saw him coming, and ran part way down the steps to meet him. With
her arms around his neck, she half-sobbed out the words in a choked
voice, "Oh, Don. Do you know what has happened? Could you see from your
boat? Little Donny? Smiles? Could you see, Don?"

He nodded, dumbly; but his sister kept on, "She couldn't swim, but yet
she jumped, instantly, to save him. You see, she thought that she was
alone, she didn't know about that boy. Oh, Donald, we must do something
for him, something splendid. He saved my baby's life."

Ethel was crying now, and the man forgot his own misery in comforting
her.

"But why didn't you come, Donald? You didn't know...."

"Yes, I knew that everything ... was all right. Rose waved to me and
called. I ... I _couldn't_ come, Ethel. I can't make you understand."

With the light of understanding breaking in upon her mind, and bringing
a flood of sympathy with it, his sister once more drew close and
encircled his neck with her arms.

"Where ... where is she?" he asked, as though the words were wrung from
him against his will.

"Smiles has gone for a little walk with ... Dr. Bentley, dear," answered
Ethel in a manner which she strove to make commonplace. She felt his
frame quiver, and, with a motion that was almost rough, he shook off her
comforting arms, and mounted the steps, holding to the rail as he did
so. He went directly indoors, and to his room, with the instinct of a
wounded creature to seek its cave or burrow. Save for a cold, cheerless
patch of moonlight on the floor it was dark, and he felt no desire to
turn on the lights. For a while he sat, silent and motionless, on the
edge of the bed. But he could not stand the closed-in solitude. The
place seemed filled with the fragrant presence of the girl who was not
there; would never be there. He wanted to smoke, and went to the bureau
to fumble blindly for a pipe which he remembered he had left on it. His
hand touched something small and glazed, and he drew it sharply away.
The something was the little rose jar. Smiles' first gift to him, which
had travelled far since that morning on the mountain side, five years
before.