He was a long time shut in the bed-room with Mrs. Kayll and the baby. The children, waiting about outside, could hear his voice, as he asked a number of questions, followed by their mother’s low-voiced answers. Then, all at once, he came out, and found their four eager faces waiting for him.
“Nothing catching,” he said smiling. “I’m going to send him some physic, and he’ll be ever so much better to-morrow.”
CHAPTER X.
NIGHT.
“HE seemed to think baby had got at something poisonous, and sucked it—paint or dye of some kind,” said Mrs. Kayll afterwards to Madge. “It’s impossible to say he hasn’t, when he puts everything he comes near into his mouth. One can’t always have one’s eye upon him. What do you think, dear? Does he look any worse—or a trifle better? I don’t know myself, I’ve been looking at him so long, but I almost fancy there is a little improvement.”
It was again towards evening, and, so slowly does time seem to go when anything occurs out of the common course of events, the children began to feel as though their father had been absent for years instead of only three days. Madge herself felt almost as though she had grown older in that short time. There were actually lines in her smooth brow as she examined the baby, for the difference she could not see. She kissed the small white hand that lay so listlessly over her mother’s dress, and the thick drops clouded her eyes.
“Oh, baby, baby!” she sighed, with a chill of dread creeping over her, as she found that he still seemed neither to see nor hear. “Mother, I wish it were any one of us but him, for we could at least tell how we felt. I wish with all my heart it was me.”
One by one the children went to say good-night—each more tired by doing nothing in particular than by the usual lessons or work. Each kissed the baby’s white cheek, and stole softly away to bed, scarcely speaking; and again Mrs. Kayll and Madge were left to watch and sleep in turn through the night hours.
There were only three bed-rooms in this little house where the Kaylls lived, for, when people are as poor as they were, they have often to crowd into a small space. In fact, they would not have been able to afford a house to themselves in the outskirts of London, but that they had this one very cheaply from its many disadvantages. For one thing, it was so old that it was not considered very safe, while the one adjoining it was really so unsafe that it had not been inhabited for some time. Then it stood so much below the road that it was damp, and the wall-paper used to peel off in places on the ground floor.