As her eyes dwelt half-absently on the children, she observed aloud, “Seems to me Henry’s looking better. Not so peaked. Did that pepsin treatment of Dr. Merritt’s really do him some good? I never thought much of pepsin, myself.”
The children looked at each other as if surprised by something they had not noticed before.
“Why, Henry, that’s so. You haven’t had one of your sick spells for ever so long, have you?” said Helen. To her Aunt Mattie she explained, “We’ve had so much else to think about we haven’t noticed.”
Mrs. Farnham rejected pepsin for another diagnosis. “I know what ’tis. The visit to your Gramma and Grampa Houghton! I always told your Momma that what Henry needed was country air. There’s nothing like a change of air, nothing!”
Helen said now, “We’ve got to run along, Aunt Mattie. We help about lunch. Father gets it ready, but we clear off and take Stephen out to play a while.”
“Oh, that reminds me. How about Stephen? What does.... Is he.... How does your....”
Her ingenuity was not enough to contrive a presentable form for her inquiry, but the child came to her rescue understandingly, “Why, Stephen seems to be growing out of those naughty streaks,” said Helen. “He’s lots better, somehow. He still has a tantrum once in a while, but not nearly so often, nor so bad. You see, he likes Father’s being sick!” She knew how shocking this was on Stephen’s part, and added apologetically, “He’s so little, you know. He doesn’t understand how terrible it is for poor Father. And Father tells him stories. All the time, almost. Stephen loves them. Mother was always too busy to tell stories, you know.”
“Well, I should say so indeed!” cried Aunt Mattie, outraged at the picture, even hypothetical, of poor Evangeline’s attempting to tell stories on top of everything else she had to do.
“Step along with you, children,” she said now. “I hadn’t ought to have kept you so long, as ’tis. But I’ve been worrying my head off about you all. Tell your Poppa that I’m coming right over there this afternoon to see him just as soon as I get my trunk unpacked and things straightened around a little.”