Andrew was quicker in his perceptions.

“They carried him off to the hospital in the ambulance,” he told her.  Then he added, as gently as if he had been addressing Ellen:  “I guess he wasn’t hurt so very bad.  He came to before they took him away.”

“You don’t know anything about it,” Fanny said, sharply.  “I heard them say something about his eyes.”

“His eyes!” gasped Cynthia.  She held tightly to Fanny, who looked at her with a sudden passion of sympathy breaking through her curiosity.

“Oh, I guess he wasn’t hurt so very bad; he did come to.  I heard him speak,” she said, soothingly.  She laid her hard hand over Cynthia’s slim one.

“They took him to the hospital?”

“Yes, in the ambulance.”

“Is—­my nephew in there?”

“No; he went with him.”

Cynthia looked at the other woman with an expression of utter anguish and pleading.

“Look here,” said Fanny; “the hospital ain’t very far from here.  Suppose we go up there and ask how he is?  We could call out your nephew.”

“Will you go with me?” asked Cynthia, with a heart-breaking gasp.

If Ellen could have seen her at that moment, she would have recognized her as the woman whom she had known in her childhood.  She was an utter surprise to Fanny, but her sympathy leaped to meet her need like the steel to the magnet.

“Of course I will,” she said, heartily.

“I would,” said Andrew—­“I would go with her, Fanny.”

“Of course I will,” said Fanny; “and you had better go home, I guess, Andrew, and see how I left the kitchen fire.  I don’t know but the dampers are all wide open.”

Fanny and Cynthia hastened in one direction towards the hospital, and Andrew towards home; but he paused for a minute, and looked thoughtfully up at the humming pile of Lloyd’s.  The battle was over and the strike was ended.  He drew a great sigh, and went home to see to the kitchen fire.

Chapter LVIII

Lyman Risley was very seriously injured.  There was, as the men had reported, danger for his eyes.  When Robert was called into the reception-room of the hospital to see his aunt, he scarcely recognized her.  Her soft, white hair was tossed about her temples, her cheeks were burning.  She ran up to him like an eager child and clutched his arm.

“How is he?” she demanded.  “Tell me quick!”

“They are doing everything they can for him.  Why, don’t, poor Aunt Cynthia!”

“His eyes, they said—­”

“I hope he will come out all right.  Don’t, dear Aunt Cynthia.”  The young man put his arm around his aunt and spoke soothingly, blushing like a girl before this sudden revelation of an under-stratum of delicacy in a woman’s heart.

Cynthia lost control of herself completely; or, rather, the true self of her rose uppermost, shattering the surface ice of her reserve.  “Oh,” she said—­“oh, if he—­if he is—­blind, if he is—­I—­I—­will lead him everywhere all the rest of his life; I will, Robert.”