Their actual parting was brief. Prout left them alone and waited outside. "Good-bye--you--you--the best and bravest of living things that I have ever seen," he said. "Good-bye, dear Hilary. We shall meet again--somewhere." "I know it--thank my God I know it." She went close to him and looked into his haggard face. Then she kissed him. "I'll wave my handkercher as the train passes." "And I'll wave mine, Sarah Jane." Presently, when the train steamed along between Hilary Woodrow and the sea, though Prout waved from the window and Woodrow stood behind him and strained to catch his last glimpse of her, they only marked her hand held out, and the dance of her handkerchief fluttering. She saw nothing, for the blue of her April eyes was dimmed and drowned. CHAPTER XI THE DOLLS "Jar," said Mrs. Weekes, "you be getting on home to fifty years old, and since I first slapped your breech, when you'd been in the world a matter of six months, you and me have never had no grave difference of opinion." "What then?" asked the man. Sarah Jane was spending a soft May evening at the cottage of Mary; but, not desiring to be in her presence, Jarratt left them and went to see his mother. For some time Hephzibah had expressed a desire for private conversation with him, and now Jarratt gave her the opportunity. But quickly he regretted it. Rumour had reached his mother's ears, and she felt very agitated to learn that some strange and most unusual event was pending. Only whispers and hints had reached her, and since such shadowy insinuations were specially offensive to her mind, she commanded her son before her and ordered him to be plain. "What then?" repeated Jarratt. "Then 'twould be an everlasting shame and misfortune if we fell out now--you in your prime and me with my white hair and coming to the end of my days. You've never hid much from me that I know of, and nothing that I didn't find out if I wanted to. So don't try now. There's all manner of beastly whisperings in the air; and you be in them. Wherever I go to have a talk, people say, 'What's this here thing Mr. Jarratt be up to?' And when I tell 'em I don't know, they shut their mouths and change the subject." "So much the better. It don't concern you, anyway." "You can say that! But it do concern me, and I will know the truth of it. From all I hear it concerns everybody called Weekes; for the credit of a family be of some account, though 'tis only a family of dormice, like your father's family. I was born a Mudge; and that's a lasting blessing to me; and you've got my blood in you and ban't going to demean it, I should hope." "If old Huggins have been talking--or William Churchward either, I'll wring their necks!"