But at this moment poor Hugh wanted his candle.
“What did he—what did Sir Thomas tell you?” he asked brokenly.
“That I had an excellent chance. That I was the sort of person who got well. That I was going to get well. That when I got well, I should be younger and better than now. I liked that, Hugh. We shall be more of an age, so they say.”
“Oh, that silly joke,” said he.
“Yes, it will be knocked on the head, and I shall put cold-cream on your venerable nose and give you your gruel, and then go downstairs again to play with the children, when I have tucked you up in bed and shut the window for fear you should catch cold. It will be fun.”
“Don’t, don’t,” said Hugh.
But she was comforting him.
“That will not be in the immediate future, dear,” she said; “and I want to tell now about the immediate future. Now, don’t gasp. To-morrow I must go to Davos. I have looked out the train already; we go—because you are coming too—we go to a place called Landquart, and up from there. I promised Sir Thomas to do that, Hugh. I have to stop there till I am well; it comes to that, practically.”
Then suddenly Edith found she wanted comfort herself, comfort on the lower level, so to speak, not from the high level.
“Ah, that is dreadful,” she cried; “it may be a year, it may be more, before I see our dear home again, and the down all gray and green above it, and the garden and the water-meadows, and—and Mrs. Owen,” she added, comforting herself by that eternal comforter of humour. But she slipped out of its hands again.