His anxiety
for Hugh slipped imperceptibly into a vague pondering over his own
youthfulness. That's what those two were always telling him, sometimes
savagely, sometimes tenderly! "You're too young." What did it mean
to him, anyhow, that he was "too young"? A desolation from which at
times he suffered in secret overcame him.
He was twenty-one or -two--or his memory lied. They had never
celebrated his birthdays, but he was five or six years old when Hugh
had been so suddenly, so unexplainably taken from the house, back
there in the little Eastern college town where they had lived. It
was a few months later that Bella--Cousin Bella, who worked at "the
farm"--came for him, a furtive, desperate Bella with a bruised
face--a Bella tight-strung for flight, for a breaking of the galling
accustomed ties of her life, for a terrible plunge into unknown
adventure. She had muttered to him, as she dressed him and bundled
together a few of his belongings, that they "were going to Hugh"--only
it was another name she used, a name since blotted from their lives.
Hugh had sent for them. She was the only person in the world that
Hugh could trust. But no one must know where they were going.
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