Materfamilias

by Ada Cambridge

I exclaimed in astonishment at the sight of her.

"It was no good, mother; I had to come," said she, rising quickly and taking out her hat-pins. "And I did not warn you, for fear you should prevent me. Don't scold me—Dr. Juke doesn't. I want to help, and he says I can be a lot of use."

"Invaluable," said Juke, in a young man's gushing manner. "It was only for your own sake, Miss Phyllis, that I wished you out of it."

She is not Miss Phyllis, by the way, but Miss Braye.

"I mean to be everybody's right hand," she continued, trying to cheer me. "We are not going to let you kill yourself any more, mother dear. And we are not going to let Harry die, either—are we, Dr. Juke?"

"No, no," replied the doctor, with an exaggerated air of reassuring me, as if pacifying a timid child. "We'll pull him through amongst us. The sight of your face"—it was not my face he meant—"will be the best medicine he can have. Only, remember, you must not talk to him."

"I know—I know. You will find that I shall be discretion itself."

She was quite gay. I could see that she did not yet realise the situation, poor child, whatever Juke had told her about it. But when I took her upstairs, and showed her the changed face in the sick-room, she was shocked enough. She and her brother were devoted to each other. They used to go to their little parties and entertainments together, and everybody used to remark upon their looks and say what a handsome pair they made. He thought—that is, he used to think, before other girls spoiled him—that there was no one like his sister Phyllis, and she thought the same of him. Nevertheless, when I told her of his conduct with Miss Blount, she was quite indignant. She said she would never have believed it of him. At the same time she was firmly convinced, as I was, that Miss Blount had done the love-making and led him on. What a comfort it was to have my dear girl to talk to and confide in! She was not only a lovely young creature—though I say it—but had the sense of an old woman. Lily was quite different. But then Lily was a child—barely seventeen—and she had an absurd infatuation for her governess, such as you often see in a raw schoolgirl. It was a stupid mistake on my part to engage a person of twenty-two to teach her—I saw it now; and I think it a still greater mistake to confer University degrees on such young women. You seem to expect them to be above the imbecilities of ordinary girls, and they are not a bit.

Well, we shut them up together in a separate part of the house, giving them their meals in the schoolroom. We did not want Lily to be losing the education we were paying so much for, and Tom and I just took our food as we could get it. We had no heart to sit down to table. Sometimes he slept for a little, and sometimes I, but one or the other of us was always on guard; while Phyllis prepared the iced milk and soda, and waited on the nurse and doctor. Certainly the doctor was most devoted; he could not have done more for his patient if he had been his own brother.

I am sure it was the opinion of his medical colleague that Harry could never pull through. He said, in so many words, that the case was as grave as possible, owing chiefly, as I understood, to the accumulation of fluid in the chest, which could not be mechanically dealt with. Nevertheless, the dear boy rallied a little, and then a little more—the fever keeping down in the daytime, and not running quite so high at night—until it really seemed that we might begin to hope. He was such a splendid young fellow, and had such a magnificent constitution! But for that I am convinced he could not have survived an hour. One afternoon he was sleeping so comfortably that they all insisted on my going out for some fresh air. Tom took me for a walk round the garden, and we planned what we would do for our beloved one when he got well—how we would go for a little travel to amuse and cheer him, to recruit his strength and distract his mind from nonsense.