Her heart was beating horribly.

WHY hadn't Father taken his clothes?
When Mother came out of the room, Bobbie flung tightly clasping arms round her waist, and whispered:-- "Mother--Daddy isn't--isn't DEAD, is he ?" "My darling, no! What made you think of anything so horrible ?" "I--I don't know," said Bobbie, angry with herself, but still clinging to that resolution of hers, not to see anything that Mother didn't mean her to see.
Mother gave her a hurried hug.

"Daddy was quite, QUITE well when I heard from him last," she said, "and he'll come back to us some day.

Don't fancy such horrible things, darling!" Later on, when the Russian stranger had been made comfortable for the night, Mother came into the girls' room.

She was to sleep there in Phyllis's bed, and Phyllis was to have a mattress on the floor, a most amusing adventure for Phyllis.