“I hardly touch the stuff,” said Robert curtly; “Laura need not provide any for me.”
“As a medicine it is invaluable, Robert. To be used, you understand, and not to be abused. That's the whole secret of it. But I'll step down to the Three Pigeons for half an hour.”
“My dear father,” cried the young man “you surely are not going out upon such a night. If you must have brandy could I not send Sarah for some? Please let me send Sarah; or I would go myself, or—”
Pip! came a little paper pellet from his sister's chair on to the sketch-book in front of him! He unrolled it and held it to the light.
“For Heaven's sake let him go!” was scrawled across it.
“Well, in any case, wrap yourself up warm,” he continued, laying bare his sudden change of front with a masculine clumsiness which horrified his sister. “Perhaps it is not so cold as it looks. You can't lose your way, that is one blessing. And it is not more than a hundred yards.”
With many mumbles and grumbles at his daughter's want of foresight, old McIntyre struggled into his great-coat and wrapped his scarf round his long thin throat. A sharp gust of cold wind made the lamps flicker as he threw open the hall-door. His two children listened to the dull fall of his footsteps as he slowly picked out the winding garden path.
“He gets worse—he becomes intolerable,” said Robert at last. “We should not have let him out; he may make a public exhibition of himself.”
“But it's Hector's last night,” pleaded Laura. “It would be dreadful if they met and he noticed anything. That was why I wished him to go.”
“Then you were only just in time,” remarked her brother, “for I hear the gate go, and—yes, you see.”