“Oh, miss,” he said, “I must go back! Neither of us has been to see Alice, and I haven't for more than a week! Think of her lying there, expecting and expecting, and no one coming! It's just the history of the world! I must go back!”
He would not have said so much but that Barbara sat regarding him without response of word or look, appearing not to heed him. He began to wonder.
“Alice can't be dead!” he thought with himself, “She was pretty well when I saw her last!”
“She is gone,” said Barbara quietly, and the thought just discarded returned on Richard with a sickening clearness.
He stood and stared. Barbara saw him turn white, and understood his mistake—so terrible to one who had no hope of ever again seeing a departed friend.
“She went home to her mother yesterday,” she said.
Richard gave a great sigh of relief.
“I thought she was dead!” he answered, “—and I had not been so good to her as I might have been!”
“Richard,” said Barbara—it was the first time she called him by his name—“did anybody in the world ever do all he might to make his best friends happy?”
“No, miss, I don't think it. There must always be something more he might have done.”