“Is it possible!” commented Mr. Evringham, smoothing his mustache.
“Not only possible but true, and I wished to go to headquarters and find out the exact state of the case.”
Again the broker's shoulders began to shake.
“Ballard isn't headquarters,” he replied.
Mrs. Evringham regarded him, startled. She wondered if affairs were perhaps very serious, and her father-in-law's nerves overstrained. She knew that he had dispensed with the afternoon ride which was so important to him.
She grew a shade paler. “I wish you would tell me, father, just what the doctor said,” she begged.
Mr. Evringham raised a protesting hand. “I couldn't think of it,” he laughed. “It would give me apoplexy.”
His daughter-in-law began to retreat, and the broker passed her and went into his study, still laughing.
Mrs. Evringham stood with lips parted, looking after him. Her heart beat fast. The doctor had called twice. He had come down the stairs in dead silence just now. She knew it, for she had been listening and waiting to intercept him. She had meant to say a number of pretty things to him concerning Eloise's anxiety about her little cousin. Her own anxiety redoubled, and she hurried to her daughter's room and narrated her experience.
“I really think we may have to go, Eloise,” she finished nervously. “Even if it isn't infectious, it is so dreadfully dispiriting to be in a house where there is a dangerous illness, and possibly worse. I've been thinking perhaps we might go in town and take lodgings for a while. No one need know it. We could even stay there through the summer. None of our friends would be in town; then in autumn we could come back here.”