Then she was tired, and said no more. We had such little talks now and then; she seemed not to mind what she said to me.
Poor Jack! I hardly know how he got through those long days of anxiety. It was bad enough for Cherry and me, though we could at least be with Maimie, and could feel that we were doing something for her. But Jack, outside the room, and obliged to be for hours away in the city, giving his mind to work,—poor Jack was sorely tried.
There came days soon when talking on Maimie’s part was impossible, and anxiety was at its height. Inflammation of the lungs set in, and Maimie was so ill that we almost despaired of her recovery. Measles had now passed into another kind of illness; and it did seem to me as if there could be very little risk of infection for a man of Churton’s age. But Churton did not see it so at all. He said she was in the same room still, and he saw no use in running a venture; and he came less and less often to the house to make inquiries.
At last the worst was over, and Maimie began to improve, slowly, and not steadily. Days grew into weeks, and better times were followed by relapses. From the time when Maimie first sickened, it was ten weeks before she could leave her room; and then Jack carried her downstairs as if she had been a baby, she had grown so wasted and light.
[CHAPTER XX.]
THE BROTHERS
CHURTON had not been near us for three weeks, when Maimie left her room. He had written once, just a line, to say he was glad to hear she was better, and to enclose a cheque for £20. This had been a great help; indeed, I hardly know how we could have got on without it. But after that we heard no more; and for two weeks Aunt Briscoe had not written either. I could not understand this, unless she were ill; she had always been so very regular.
“Father doesn’t seem to trouble himself much about me,” Maimie said softly, as she lay on the sofa, looking so pale and thin, poor child, with her flaxen hair short and curly, and her black eyes seeming to have grown to twice their usual size.
“So much the better,” Jack said, bending over her with a manly protecting air, which it did me good to see. Jack had grown far more manly of late. Time enough that he should too! “So much the better! Uncle isn’t worth your troubling yourself about; and the less he concerns himself with you, the thoroughly you are ours—ours, Maimie.”
“I am not sure, Jack,” she said, looking up in his face. “One never can tell what my father means to do next.”