“You really need not be uneasy, my dear madam,” he said impressively, “unless things take a most unexpected turn, and then, of course, we will let you know. He is a fine healthy child, and admirably nursed by yonder good woman,” nodding towards the house.
“She is indeed a good woman!” returned Madeline fervently, as her thoughts recalled Mrs. Holt’s unwearying care and night and day attendance on her nursling. She even seemed to grudge her permission to feed him, or to moisten his lips.
“I’m afraid I can’t come to-morrow, unless I am really needed,” said Madeline plaintively. “You say there is no danger now—you are sure? I may rely on you to tell me?”
“Yes; there is none whatever at present.”
“Because if there were, I should remain all night.”
“There is no occasion, especially if you are urgently needed elsewhere,” rejoined the doctor, who nevertheless thought it rather strange that this pretty, tearful, agitated young lady should not find it the most natural thing to remain with her sick child—her only child.
Promising that she should have early news the next morning by telegraph, he handed her into the fly, and bowed her off the scene, just as another inquiring relative—equally near and equally anxious—came hurrying up to him—in fact, the child’s father, who had taken the short cut from the station by the path across the fields.
“Most peculiar state of affairs,” thought the doctor to himself; “there must be a screw loose somewhere. The child’s parents apparently well-off, fashionable people, living apart and visiting the farm separately, and never alluding to one another. What did it mean?”
Mrs. Holt promptly set the matter before him in three words. It meant that “they had quarrelled.” Mr. Wynne remained at the farmhouse all night, sharing Mrs. Holt’s vigil, and watching every turn, every movement, every breath of the little sleeper as anxiously as she did herself. In the morning there was no positive change one way or another. The pendulum of little Harry’s existence seemed to have paused for a time before it made that one vital movement in the direction of either life or death.
A message was despatched to Miss West in these laconic words—“Slept pretty well; much the same.” And Madeline, relieved in her mind, entered on the work of a long and toilsome day. In short, she continued the grand preparations for a ball that they were giving that evening. It was to be the ball of the season.