"Is he all right? Is it safe for him to go alone?" asked Avis; and her sister answered that she need fear nothing.
"It's up and down like that. His memory fails him sometimes in little things. Not in big things. It shook him to find John Henry and you wanting him. But it's done him good already."
"He'll forget about it before he comes back," added Peter. "He'll often go out to think over something, or say he's going to, and then he comes back and you find it's slipped out of his mind altogether."
"But not a great thing like this," promised Auna.
"It's as much for you as for him," continued Avis. "It's not a place for you to be lost in—Huntingdon isn't—and if you have to go and live with him there, he'll very likely end by losing his reason altogether, and it's very bad for a young creature like you."
"Don't you say that, Avis. I couldn't live away from him. And he'll get better I expect. Days often happen when he's all right and his mind quite peaceful."
"It would be a lot more convenient if he went to John Henry," said Avis. "It's clear he finds it too wretched to stop here. I feel it creepy myself—with mother's ghost in every corner, and in the garden too. She was so busy that you can't see a thing without remembering her part of it. But he wouldn't be haunted with her at Bullstone, and we could make jobs for him, and keep him running about and doing something."
"I'd much like it to happen," admitted Auna, "for his sake. It's all one to me where I go, if I see him getting better."
"I'll keep it before him, and speak up for it so much as he'll let me," promised Peter. "Of course it's what ought to be. But I don't think it will. Because loneliness is his stronghold, and the lonelier he is, the better he is."
"You might put old Billy and Adam Winter on to him," said his brother. "He sets store by what they think. Tell 'em the fine offer I've made, Auna, and see what they say."