'Then there's not much chance of his going back?'
'Not before Christmas at soonest. One would think the poor little fellow must have been aware of that; but the verdict cut him up very much. I thought he had better be quiet till the heat of the day was past, so he lay on my bed till six o'clock, and then he said he was better; but he hardly spoke all the way home.'
Wilmet went at once to see after him, and found him already in bed; but whether sleepy, suffering, or sorrowful, she could not make out, for he hid his eyes from the candle, and only muttered 'No, thank you,' in reply to whatever she offered, till she yielded to his evident longing for darkness and silence.
He was up and about in the morning; but when at noon Bernard rushed in from school, he was neither in the drawing-room, garden, nor office, and the door of his—or rather Mr. Froggatt's—bed-room was locked. Bernard bounced at it, calling, 'Let me in, I say; I'll not make a row.'
'There aren't any more of you?' parleyed Lance.
'No! Let me in, I say!'—kicking at the panels—'I must speak to you!'
'I'm coming; hold your din!' And Lance revealed himself without coat or boots.
'Holloa—how dark! You were never asleep? I came, because one can never catch you without a string of girls and babies after you.'
'Cut on,' said Lance resignedly, shaking up his horse-hair pillow: while Bernard seated himself on the table, and in the half-light of the shuttered room, began to disentangle some knotted twine.
'Did you come here to do that?' said Lance, wanting to finish his nap, and chiefly restrained by the trouble of the thing from kicking the intruder out.