if they once get her over there alone, away from everybody, who knows what will happen to her, or what will happen here before she gets back? Can't you see—" Here Bert stopped in utter exasperation. "Oh, what's the use!" she cried; "I can't get it over to you; and meanwhile, with every opportunity, you just play around like a moke and don't do a thing!—And that poor old woman just grieving her heart out day and night! It's abominable!"
Dick rose up more puzzled and worried than angry. "Well," he said, "I can't for the life of me see what Evalani can tell her that will help any. If the girl's dead, she's dead, and I should think that it would be a lot better for the mother to try to put it out of her mind; than to rake it all up again now, by talking over how it happened and all that sort of thing."
"Put it out of her mind! A lot you know about mothers!" sniffed Bert. "Can't you see what it means to have a child walk right out of your life like that, and you never to know one thing of what happened from the last moment that you saw her? Where she went, what she thought, what she suffered!"
"But," said Dick, "what would Evalani know about all that? She saw her the day before, but not on the day that she disappeared."
"Well, even then," persisted Bert, "she talked over with her—she must have—the whole situation.
