“Yes, and I never saw my mother more exulting. When Rosamond ran down to tell her, she put her arms round her neck and cried. She who never had a tear through all last year. I met your father and mother half-way, and they told me I might come on.”
“I think nothing short of such news would have made mamma leave this boy,” said Jenny; “but she must have her jubilee with Mrs. Poynsett.”
“And I’m quite well,” said Herbert, who had been grasping Julius’s hand, with a wonderful look in his eyes; “yes, really—the doctor said so.”
“Yes, he did,” said Jenny, “only he said we were to let him alone, and that he was not to get up till he felt quite rested.”
“And I shall get up to dinner,” said Herbert, so sleepily, that Julius doubted it. “I hope to come back before Sunday.”
“What does your doctor say to that?”
“He says,” replied Jenny, “that this gentleman must be rational; that he has nothing the matter with him now, but that he is low, and ripe for anything. Don’t laugh, you naughty boy, he said you were ripe for anything, and that he must—yes, he must—be turned out to grass somehow or other for the winter, and do nothing at all.”
“I begin to see what you are driving at, Mrs. Joan, you look so triumphant.”
“Yes,” said Jenny, blushing a little, and looking quite young again; “I believe poor mamma would be greatly reconciled to it, if Herbert were to see me out to Natal.”
“Is that to be the way?”