“I will see about it! Lie down now! There’s nothing to be done to-night.”
“But promise! promise! And not a word!”
All this was reiterated till Wilfred at last was exhausted for the time, and to a certain degree pacified by the reassuring voice in which Bernard soothed him and undertook to take the matter in hand, hardly knowing what he undertook, and only feeling the necessity of quieting the perilous excitement, and of helping the mother to bring a certain amount of tranquillity.
His own little girl was going on well, and quite capable of being amused in the morning by being compared to a lobster or a tiger lily; and Primrose was reported in an equally satisfactory state, ready either for sleep or continuous reading by her sisters. Only Wilfred was in the same, or a more anxious, state of fever; and as soon as Bernard had satisfied himself that there was no special use in his remaining in the house, he set out for the marble works office, having made up his mind as to one part of what he had expressed as “seeing about it.”
He had hardly turned into the Cliffe road before he met Captain Henderson walking up, and they exchanged distant inquiries and answers as to whether each might be thought dangerous to the other’s home; after which they forgathered, and compared notes as to invalids. The Captain had heard of Wilfred’s going home ill, and was coming, he said, to inquire.
“He seems very seriously ill,” was the answer. “I imagine there has been a chill, and a check. I was coming to speak to you about him.”
“He has spoken to you?”
Both could now consult freely. “It is a very anxious matter—not so much for the actual amount as for the habits that it shows.”
“The amount? Oh, I have made up that as regards the firm. I could not let it come before Sir Jasper, especially in the present state of things! I meant to give the young chap a desperate fright and rowing, but that will have to be deferred.”
“You must let me take it!”