“Besides,” said the Miss Bannisters’ Brother, “I’m much too hungry to give lessons. I need heaps of food—chicken and things—before I can give a lesson.”
“But Christina——” Roy gasped again.
“And, as a matter of fact, we’ve thought of a better way than the lesson,” Miss Selina said. “Mr. Bannister is going with you; but he must eat first, mustn’t he?”
It took a moment for Roy to appreciate this, but when he did he was the happiest boy in Dormstaple.
He never tasted a nicer chicken, he said afterwards.
VI
Certainly not more than three-quarters of an hour had passed before the carriage was on its way to Mapleton—with the Miss Bannisters’ Brother propped up with cushions (for he could not bear the jolting of carriages) on the back seat, and Miss Selina and Miss Sarah, who had come to look after him, on the other. Roy was on the box. You never saw such puzzled faces as the Dormstaple people had when the party went by, for the Miss Bannisters’ Brother had not driven out these twenty years; but their surprise was nothing to that of old Eliza, who wandered about the rooms all the rest of the day muttering “Little himperent boy!”
At the Mapleton gates Roy jumped down and rushed up to the house. His mother came to the door as he reached it. “Oh, mother, mother,” he cried, “he’s come himself!”
“Who has come?” she asked, forgetting to say anything about Roy’s long absence. “I hoped it was the doctor. Christina is worse, I’m afraid; she won’t sleep.”
“It’s all right,” Roy assured her. “I’ve brought the Miss Bannisters’ Brother, who mends dolls and everything, and he’ll put the eyes right in no time, and then Chrissie’ll be well again. Here they are!”