"Well, you've got Baby, any way."
"But if I should lose Ray, what is Baby to me!"
Kitty, who had not the heart to add to her beloved sister's agony, did her best to comfort her. "He was out of danger when Miss Bright wrote—let me see—that was about three weeks ago, or nearly, and, as you have had no cable since, it follows that he is all right by now."
"But I ought to go straight to him!"
"And they might be sending him straight home to you!"
It was not at all an unlikely possibility, so Joyce cabled to her husband to inquire his plans.
The answer came from Darjeeling that, in view of the great heat in the Red Sea at that season of the year, he was recuperating in the hills.
She was then persuaded by relatives and friends to possess her soul in patience and adhere to her original plan of returning to India in the autumn,—the best time for arriving in the East. By then she would be able to decide whether to take her baby out to India, or leave him behind in the care of the grandparents and a capable nurse.
A slight indisposition to the infant owing to the disturbances of teething, decided her to remain, and to pour out her heart to her husband in a letter telling him of her longing to be with him during his convalescence.
Somehow the written words did not adequately convey her depth of feeling, and Joyce was dissatisfied, especially with the passage which referred to the baby's indisposition: