It was too much for me. I had to lean against the wagon-wheel and gulp. It was Lady Alicia, emerging from the shack, who brought me back to the world about me. I could just see her as she stood beside me, for night had fallen by this time, night nearly as black as the blackness of my own heart.
"Look here," she said almost gruffly. "Whatever happens, you've got to have something to drink. I've got a kettle on, and I'm going back to make tea, or a pot of coffee, or whatever I can find."
"Tea?" I echoed, as the engines of indignation raced in my shaken body. "Tea? It sounds pretty, doesn't it, sitting down to a pink tea, when there's a human being dying somewhere out in that darkness!"
My bitterness, however, had no visible effect on Lady Alicia.
"Perhaps coffee would be better," she coolly amended. "And those babies of yours are crying their heads off in there, and I don't seem to be able to do anything to stop them. I rather fancy they're in need of feeding, aren't they?"
It was then and then only that I remembered about my poor neglected Twins. I groped my way in through the darkness, quite calm again, and sat down and unbuttoned my waist and nursed Poppsy, and then took up the indignant and wailing Pee-Wee, vaguely wondering if the milk in my breast wouldn't prove poison to them and if all my blood hadn't turned to acid.
I was still nursing Pee-Wee when Bud Teetzel came into the shack and asked how many lanterns we had about the place. There was a sullen look on his face, and his eyes refused to meet mine. So I knew his search had not succeeded.
Then young O'Malley came in and asked for matches, and I knew even before he spoke, that he too had failed. They had all failed.
I could hear Dinky-Dunk's voice outside, a little hoarse and throaty. I felt very tired, as I put Pee-Wee back in his cradle. It seemed as though an invisible hand were squeezing the life out of my body and making it hard for me to breathe. I could hear the cows bawling, reminding the world that they had not yet been milked. I could smell the strong coffee that Lady Alicia was pouring out into a cup. She stepped on something as she carried it to me. She stopped to pick it up--and it was one of Dinkie's little stub-toed button shoes.