March opened cold and stormy. Rheumatism made a clutch at M. de Ronville. For several days he did not come downstairs, but insisted that some of the guests must come to him. Dr. Langdale skipped away from a lecture he really desired to hear, and spent an hour comforting the invalid. Madame Clerval came in with a budget of news and friendly gossip, and Daffodil talked of her little girlhood, and old Pittsburg, as they had begun to call it, and sitting on the arm of great-grandfather's chair, and listening to tales of a still older time. He did not wonder that his friend Duvernay had lived to be almost a hundred, with all that affection to make the way pleasant.
Then he improved and came downstairs, took up chess-playing, and little promenades on the porch when the sun shone. And then the talk veered round to Daffodil's departure. He would not hear anything about it at first.
"Yet we have no right to keep her away from her own household, when she has been brave enough to give up all the winter to us," Mr. Bartram said.
"Oh, no, I suppose not. If I was younger, or in assured health, I should go and spend the summer with them. Oh, don't look so startled. I know it wouldn't do, with my uncertain health."
Aldis smiled. "If the summer is fine, and you keep pretty well, we might both take a trip. I would hardly trust you to go alone."
"So we might." The elder was gratified with the consideration.
"Aldis?" presently, in a half-enquiring tone.
"Well?" glancing up.
"Do you think—that Dr. Langdale—that there is anything between him and Daffodil?"
"There has been some talk. But young Pemberton is devoted to her as well."