"I'll not look at the road for five minutes," she told herself, resolutely, and sat staring at the watch open in her hand. Five minutes later she snapped the lid shut, and looked. Blazing, unbroken sunshine. "It ought to have been here by this time," she thought with a tightening of her lips. Perhaps he was away? Her heart sank at that; but how absurd! Suppose he was. What did a few hours' waiting amount to? She had waited thirteen years. For another hour she watched in the heat and silence of the garden; then started to hear Sarah, at her elbow, saying that dinner was on the table. "Very well," she answered impatiently. "I'll wait another five minutes," she said to herself. But she waited ten. When she sat down in the dining-room, she ate almost nothing. Once she asked Sarah if she knew how long it took for a despatch to come from Philadelphia to Old Chester. Sarah gaped at the question, and said she didn't know as she'd ever heard. In the afternoon, with covert glances out of the window, she kept indoors and tried to put her mind on practical things: the arrangements with her landlord for cancelling the lease; the packing and shipping of furniture. At last, on a sudden impulse, she said to herself that she would go and meet David as he came home from school--and call at the telegraph-office. In the post-office, where the telegraph bound Old Chester to the outer world, Mrs. Minns, looking up from her knitting, saw the tense face at the delivery window. "No letters for you, Mrs. Richie," she said; then she remembered the telegram that had by this time interested all Old Chester, and got up and came forward, sympathetically curious. "Well'm; I suppose there's a good deal of dyin' this time of year?" "Have you a despatch for me?" Mrs. Richie said curtly. "No'm;" said Mrs. Minns. "Did Dr. King send a telegram for me this morning?" she asked in a sudden panic of alarm. "Yes'm," the postmistress said, "he sent it." Mrs. Richie turned away, and began to walk about the office; up and down, up and down. Once she stopped and read the names on the pigeonholes of the letter-rack; once the telegraph instrument clicked, and she held her breath: "Is that mine?" "It ain't," Mrs. Minns said laconically. Helena went to the open doorway, and gazed blankly out into Main Street. She might as well go home; he wasn't going to telegraph. She told herself that he was out of town, and had not received her despatch. But her explanation was not convincing; if he was away, the despatch would have been forwarded to him. It must be that as he was coming on Saturday, he had not thought it worth while to telegraph. She wandered aimlessly out into the hot street--there was no use waiting any longer; and as for meeting David, he had gone home long ago.