“Good-bye,” said Rose, at the door of the pawnshop. “It’s early closing to-day. I’m going in by the area. Thank you for the tea.”
“I’m so glad to have seen you. Thank you for giving me one of the pleasantest afternoons that I’ve spent for a long while.”
“I haven’t made you late for your train, have I?” she cried in sudden alarm.
“No, there’s plenty of time. I shall keep this fellow on and go straight to the station. I hope the little chap will be all right to-night, and I shall think of you both in the country to-morrow. Good-bye.”
Rose ran upstairs, astonished at finding herself committed to an immediate return to Squires, and yet surprisingly unperturbed at the prospect.
She found Cecil entertaining Felix Menebees with stories of his life in Ceylon, to which she did not allow herself to pay conscious attention. The little boy was not coughing, but he looked pale and languid, and her heart contracted strangely at his sudden flush of joy when she told him that they would go back to the country next day.
“Oh, Mrs. Aviolet!” said Felix Menebees, and looked at her in dismay through his spectacles.
“It’ll be the best thing to put him right, won’t it?” Rose said. “And we’re really only supposed to be here on a visit, you know. But we shall be back again one of these days, I expect.”
She had only the vaguest of projects in her mind, besides the desire to cheer the disconsolate Felix, but Cecil, with one of the sudden, uncanny intuitions of childhood, put the idea into words for her.
“Mummie’ll come here when I’ve been sent to school, Felix. And perhaps I’ll spend some of my holidays here, and tell you all about my school.”