“I can’t look,” she groaned. “I can’t! I can’t! I’ll get a fence put round there if I have to do it myself. The least little slip, and nothing could save one, whether man, woman, child, or poor dumb animal.”
When she reached the top of the hill she met a new perplexity. Where could she look now? Which way could she go?--to Mr. Winter’s, or right on over the downs which stretched away to the very edge of the cliff?
“Well,” she thought, “they wouldn’t go to Mr. Winter’s if they could help it;” and she turned and walked in the other direction, on and on, past the Fairy Ring, and all the time she gazed about her, but never a speck of anything living or moving could she see, and she turned away in despair. Coming slowly back, she once more reached Mr. Winter’s gate.
“I’ve a good mind to go in and ask Mrs. Tucker if she has caught sight or sound of them,” she sighed. “It isn’t likely, but when one’s in despair-- Oh, my Aaron! my Aaron and Miss Loveday! What will the master and missus say?”
And poor Bessie had begun to cry with fright and misery, when, just as she had turned in at Mr. Winter’s gate, who should she see coming down the pebbly path towards her but two dejected little figures, walking hand in hand.
At the first sight of her they paused, hardly recognising her, and half afraid--then, with a cry, they rushed into her arms, and for a few minutes all three wept together.
“What ’ave ’ee been doing--where ’ave ’ee been?” cried Bessie, the first to check her tears. “Oh, my dear life, the fright you’ve gived me, Aaron! I ought to lace your jacket for you; it’s what you deserves. But I haven’t the heart to. Oh, my dear life! the fright I’ve had, and how glad I am to see ’ee both. I don’t know what I haven’t thought might have happened to ’ee. But what have you been doing, you naughty, naughty children, to leave your beds and get out of window like that? I’ll never be able to trust ’ee any more, and I’ll have bars put to them windows before I sleep to-night!”
By this time some of their alarm had passed off, but the children sobbed on, partly from hunger, partly from weariness and shock, but a great deal from the sense of their naughtiness to poor Bessie, who had been so good and kind to them; and it was not until they had sobbed out all their story that they could control themselves and feel at all comforted.