The tears rushed to Winona’s eyes.  Did Aunt Harriet really feel like that?  Oh, why could she not go and comfort her?  She turned impulsively into the garden.  The slow steps were coming back up the paved walk.  She would have given worlds to walk up to her aunt and fling her arms round her, but the old sense of shyness and reserve held her back.  Miss Beach was passing along the border, her dress brushing the flowers as she went by.  It would surely be easy to join her, and at least to take her arm!  Easy?  No!  She had never done such a thing in her life with her aunt.  A peck of a kiss was the only mark of affection that they had hitherto exchanged.  Winona looked and longed to express her sympathy, but the invisible barrier seemed strong as ever.  Aunt Harriet turned aside and went towards the kitchen.  The opportunity was lost.

“How horribly we live right inside ourselves!” thought Winona.  “How few people know just what we’re feeling and thinking, and how hard it is to let them know!  The ‘I’ at the back of me is so different from the outside of me!  When I want to say things I turn stupid and my tongue stops.  I suppose most other people feel really the same, and we all live in our own little world and only touch one another now and then.  Human speech is such a poor medium.  Will it be dropped in the next life, and shall we talk with our hearts?”

It was on the very morning after this that Winona received an agitated letter from home.  Her mother had bad news.  Percy had been wounded, and was in the Red Cross Hospital at Prestwick.  Mrs. Woodward wrote hurriedly, for she was on the point of starting off to see him, but she promised to send a bulletin directly after her visit.  Winona spent a horrible day.  Percy was never for a moment out of her thoughts.  The insufficiency of the information made it harder to bear.  She did not know whether the wound was slight or dangerous, and her fears whispered the worst.  The next report, however, was more reassuring.  Percy had had an operation and the doctors hoped that with care he ought to do well.  A daily bulletin would be sent to his mother, and she promised to forward it punctually to Abbey Close.

“But I shan’t get it till the day afterwards!” exclaimed Winona tragically.  “Oh, how I wish he were at the Red Cross Hospital here instead of at Prestwick!  If I could only see him!”

“Cheer up!  Things might be worse!” remarked her aunt briefly.

Miss Beach said no more at the moment, but at supper time she announced: 

“We shall have to breakfast early to-morrow morning, Winona.  You and I are going to Prestwick for the day.  I’ve asked Miss Bishop to let you off.”

“To Prestwick?” gasped Winona.  “To the Red Cross Hospital?  Oh, Aunt Harriet, do you suppose they’ll let us see Percy?”

“It’s visitors’ day, for I telegraphed to inquire.  I wasn’t going on a wild-goose chase, I assure you.  I know the red tape of hospitals only too well.  We may see him between two-thirty and four o’clock.  It’s a long journey, of course, and the trains are awkward from Seaton, but we can be back by nine.”