efore.

"Audrey," he said, "what _can_ you mean?" He looked quite startled and
frightened. "Audrey," he said, suddenly jumping out of bed, "I must get
into your bed. I'm sure I won't catch cold, and I want to whisper to
you."

I could not help making room for him in my cot, and then we put our arms
round each other, and Tom said to me in a very low voice--"Audrey, do
you mean that Racey and you and me are all going to _die_?"

Poor Tom, he looked so pitiful when he said that I was so sorry for him.

"Oh no, Tom dear. Of course I don't mean that. What could have made you
think so?" I said.

"Because unless it was that I don't see how we _could_ go away alone.
Papa and mother would never let us. We're too little."

"I didn't mean that we'd really go alone in the railway," I explained,
"somebody would go with us--Pierson perhaps, if she wasn't married. But
still in a way it would be going away alone. Oh Tom, I have felt so
funny all night--as if I _couldn't_ believe it."

Then I told him what I had heard and what mother had told me; and all
the time we held each other tight. We felt so strange--the telling it to
Tom made it seem more real to me, and poor Tom seemed to feel it was
real at once. When I left off speaking at last, he stared at me again
with his puzzled-looking eyes, but he didn't seem as if he was going to
cry.

"Audrey," he said at last, starting up, "don't you think if we were all
to pray to God for papa and mother not to go away that that would be the
best plan?"

I didn't quite know what to say. I knew it was always a good thing to
pray to God, but yet I didn't feel sure that it would stop papa and
mother's going away. I was rather puzzled, but I didn't quite like to
say so to Tom.

"Audrey," he said, jigging me a little, "speak, be quick. Wouldn't that
be a good plan? Perhaps then a letter would come at breakfast to say
they weren't to go--wouldn't they be pleased?"

"I don't know," I said at last. "I almost think, for some things, papa
wants to go, and that it's a good thing for him, and if it's a good
thing for him I dare say God wouldn't unsettle it."

"But if it isn't a good thing for _us_?" said Tom, "and it can't be a
good thing for _us_--I'm sure God would unsettle it then."

I could not see it like that either.

"I shouldn't like to say it that way," I replied. "Don't you see that
would be like saying papa would do something that wasn't good for us,
and I shouldn't like to say th