“Perhaps not, but I shouldn’t feel satisfied to be away until I know what’s the matter with him. Besides, I might be wanted, you know.”
Madge compressed her lips, feeling more inclined to be angry at what seemed only selfishness, than to admire him, as she usually did, for his affectionate disposition.
“Bob and Jack are gone,” said she.
“They were obliged. And I don’t think they mind so much,” was the answer.
The day passed very slowly, and everyone seemed to find it too long. Mrs. Kayll came down, and attended to various duties with the baby always in her arms, as she did not care to part with him, even to Madge.
“He keeps just the same,” she said in the afternoon. “I don’t think he looks any worse.”
Madge caressed the little one’s cheek. She felt half inclined to cry when she saw the small face quiver as if with pain.
“He doesn’t understand it, poor little fellow,” she said. “I think he wonders why we don’t help him, and make him feel well again.”
“It’s a good thing father doesn’t know,” said Jem, who was looking on. “How anxious he would be!”
Meanwhile Mrs. Kayll was turning over a question in her own mind. Should she send for the doctor, or should she wait a little longer? She could not afford to pay him, as it had taken more than she knew how to spare to pay for someone to defend her husband—a matter that she had arranged on the previous day. The lawyer who had taken the case in hand had told her she need be under no anxiety, as all was sure to go well. There would be no difficulty in proving that Mr. Kayll had been arrested in mistake, with the evidence of Mrs. Coleson to show where he had been, and that of Jack to explain his possession of the money, while plenty of people could answer for his being a respectable auctioneer, and the last man in the world to be mixed up in a burglary, so that Mrs. Kayll was as much at ease in her mind on that score as she could be while her husband was still detained.