XLVII“He said he’d let us know.”
“Then he will do so,” said Miss Silver firmly.
Jim stood looking out into the street, his back to the room.
“And if he has nothing to tell?”
Miss Silver was knitting. She looked compassionately across the football sweater destined for her niece Ethel Burkett’s eldest boy and said,
“He will have something. I am sure of it.”
“And if he has not?”
Miss Silver did not reply. The most trying moments in human experience were those in which there was nothing to be done except to wait. They were especially trying for a man whose previous training had been one of action. Her mind sought for something which would relieve this tension and give him something to do. She said,
“You were going to show me Anne’s bag.”
He half turned with an impatient jerk of the sh
