"Oh!" exclaimed Tom, very puzzled. Then suddenly he comprehended the situation. Dr. Brewer meant that Nellie should be sent to Broadstairs.
"I hope," added the little girl, "that it won't be a very expensive medicine, because already I've cost Father so much."
Mr. Burford came home to dinner at mid-day, and, later, Tom again walked to the bank with him. Mr. Burford had had a few words in private with his wife, and he told Tom that it had been decided that Nellie was to go to Broadstairs, if possible, in September.
"I shall return and spend the afternoon with her, now," Tom said to himself, as soon as he had parted from his father at the bank door. "Oh, how dreadfully we shall miss her when she's gone!"
A quarter of an hour later Nellie, who had settled herself in an easy chair close to the window in the sitting-room, so that she could see the passers-by in the street, perceived her brother hurrying along towards home. The first glimpse of his countenance, which she could read like an open book, told her that something had happened to rouse his naturally quick temper, and she looked at him with an expression of inquiry in her eyes when, a very few minutes later, he burst noisily into her presence. "He's done it again!" he cried; "yes, he's actually dared—dared to do it again! This time I met him face to face—I was so close to him that I could have touched him!"
"Him? Who?" questioned Nellie. "Oh, do you mean that boy, Peter Perry?" There was sudden understanding in her tone.
"Of course I do! No one but Peter Perry would have treated me so—so abominably as that! After speaking to me as he did, this morning, too! It's no good trying to make excuses for him now, Nellie! I met him on the pavement, walking arm in arm with his aunt, and he neither looked at me nor spoke to me. I might have been— I might have been—"
The boy broke off, fairly choking with anger. There was a brief silence, during which Nellie, looking deeply concerned, watched him with kind eyes, then he went on:
"You can't think how I hate him—the cad! Oh, it is awful—awful to be treated with such contempt! Oh, look!—there he is again!"
"Where?" cried Nellie, leaning forward in her chair to gaze out of the window.