“A tellagrim for Mrs. Argenter,” said Sim, seizing his opportunity, and speaking to whom it might concern.  “Eighty cents to pay, and I ’blieve it’s bad news.”

“O, Mr. Sherrett, stop, please!” cried Sylvie, turning white in the dim light.  “What shall I do?  Won’t you wait a minute, Miss Sherrett, until I see?  Won’t you come in again?  Mother will be frightened to death, and I’m all alone.”

“Jump out, Amy; I’ll take Squirrel round,” was Rodney’s answer.  “Go right up; I’ll come.”

And as Sylvie took the thin envelope that held so much, and the two girls silently passed up into the piazza again, he paid Sim the eighty cents which nobody thought of at that moment or ever again, and sent him off.

Sylvie and Amy stopped under the softly bright hall lantern.  Mrs. Argenter was up-stairs in her dressing room, quite at the end of the long upper hall, changing her lace sack for a cashmere, before coming out into the evening air again.

“I think I shall open it myself,” whispered Sylvie, tremulously; “it would seem worse to mother, whatever it is, coming this way.  She has such a horror of a telegram.”  She looked at it on both sides, drew a little shivering breath, and paused again.

“Is it wicked, do you think, to wish it may be—­only grandma, perhaps?  Do you suppose it could possibly be—­my father?”

And by this time there was a hysterical sound in poor little Sylvie’s voice.

“Wait a minute,” said Amy, kindly.  “Here’s Rod.”

“OFFICE OF WESTERN UNION TELEGRAPH CO.,
NEW YORK, July 24_th_, 187-.

“To MRS. I. M. ARGENTER, Dorbury, Mass.

“Mr. Argenter has had a sunstroke.  Insensible.  Very serious. 
Will telegraph again.

“PHILIP BURKMAYER, M.D.”

Sylvie’s eyes, so roundly innocent, so star-like in their usual bright uplifting, were raised now with a wide terror in them, first to Rodney, then to Amy; and “O—­O!” broke in short, subdued gasps from her lips.

Then they heard Mrs. Argenter’s step up-stairs.

“What is the matter, Sylvie?  What are you doing?  Who is with you down there?” she said, over the baluster, from the hall above.

“O, mother!” cried Sylvie, “they aren’t gone!  Something has come!  Go up and tell her, Amy, please!” And forgetting all about Amy as “Miss Sherrett,” and all her fear of “nice girls,” she dropped down on the lower step of the staircase after Amy had passed her upon her errand, put her face between her hands and caught her breath with frightened sobs.

Rodney, leaning against the newel post, looked down at her, and said, after the manner of men,—­“Don’t cry.  It mayn’t be very bad, after all.  You’ll hear again in an hour or two.  Can’t I do something?  I’ll go to the telegraph office.  I’ll get somebody for your mother.  Whom shall I go for?”

“O, you are very kind.  I don’t know.  Wait a minute.  They didn’t say any place!  We ought to go right to New York, and we don’t know where!  O, dear!” She had lifted her head a little, just to say these broken sentences, and then it went down again.