“Henrietta,” said he, one day when they were alone together, “I was trying to reckon how long it is since I have seen mamma.”
“O, I think she will come and see you in a few days more,” said Henrietta.
“You have told me that so many times,” said Fred. “I think I must try to get to her. That passage, if it was not so very long! If Uncle Geoffrey comes on Saturday, I am sure he can manage to take me there.”
“It will be a festival day indeed when you meet!” said Henrietta.
“Yes,” said he thoughtfully. Then returning to the former subject, “But how long is it, Henrietta? This is the twenty-seventh of March, is it not?”
“Yes; a whole quarter of a year you have been laid up here.”
“It was somewhere about the beginning of February that Uncle Geoffrey went.”
“The fourth,” said Henrietta.
“And it was three days after he went away that mamma had those first spasms. Henrietta, she has been six weeks ill!”
“Well,” said Henrietta, “you know she was five weeks without stirring out of the room, that last time she was ill at Rocksand, and she is getting better.”