‘Your little boy?’ said Lucilla. ‘Do you wish to see him? I will call him.’
‘No, no, I could not;’ and his brow contracted with pain. ‘No! but did not I tell you all about him—your cousin, Honor? Do pull the curtain round, the light hurts me!’
Convinced that his mind was astray, there was no attempt at answering him; and all were so entirely occupied with his comforts, that Phœbe saw and heard no one until Robert came down, telling her that Owen had, in fact, improved much on the voyage, but that the long day’s journey by train had brought on such severe and exhausting pain in the head, that he could scarcely speak or look up, and fatigue seemed to have confused the faculties that in the morning had been quite clear. Robert was obliged to go to his seven o’clock service, and Phœbe would fain have come with him, but he thought she might be useful at home.
‘Miss Charlecote is so much absorbed in Owen,’ he said, ‘that I do not think she heard a word about that young Randolf. Mr. Currie is gone to spend to-morrow and Sunday with his father at Birmingham, but he let me have this young man to help to bring Owen home. Make Miss Charlecote understand that he is to sleep at my place. I will come back for him, and he is not to be in her way. He is such a nice fellow! And, Phœbe, I have no time, but there is Mrs. Murrell with the child in the study. Can you make her understand that Owen is far too ill to see them to-night? Keep them off poor Lucy, that’s all.’
‘Lucy, that’s all!’ thought Phœbe, as she moved to obey. ‘In spite of all he says, Lucy will always be his first thought next to St. Matthew’s; nor do I know why I should mind it, considering what a vast space there is between!’
‘Now my pa is come, shan’t I be a gentleman, and ride in a carriage?’ were the sounds that greeted Phœbe’s ears as she opened the door of the study, and beheld the small, lean child dressed in all his best; not one of the gray linen frocks that Lucilla was constantly making for him, but in a radiant tartan, of such huge pattern that his little tunic barely contained a sample of one of each portentous check, made up crosswise, so as to give a most comical, harlequin effect to his spare limbs and weird, black eyes. The disappointment that Phœbe had to inflict was severe, and unwittingly she was the messenger whom Mrs. Murrell was likely to regard with the most suspicion and dislike. ‘Come home along with me, Hoing, my dear,’ she said; ‘you’ll always find poor granny your friend, even if your pa’s ‘art is like the nether millstone, as it was to your poor ma, and as others may find it yet.’
‘I have no doubt Mr. Sandbrook will see him when he is a little recovered after his journey,’ said Phœbe.
‘No doubt, ma’am. I don’t make a doubt, so long as there is no one to put between them. I have ‘eard how the sight of an ‘opeful son was as balm to the eyes of his father; but if I could see Mr. Fulmort—’
‘My brother is gone to church. It was he who sent me to you.’
Mrs. Murrell had real confidence in Robert, whose friendliness had long been proved, and it was less impossible to persuade her to leave the house when she learnt that it was by his wish; but Phœbe did not wonder at the dread with which an interview with her was universally regarded.