"No, indeed!" Theodore responded, with a laugh at the idea.
"Well, then," the elder boy said persuasively, "try one, it can't 'arm you. Let's go and sit down in the shade somewhere."
Theodore rather reluctantly followed Tom into the lower meadow, where now stood a large hay-rick, in the shadow of which the boys seated themselves. Now, no one had ever told Theodore not to smoke; but all the same he had an idea that neither his father nor his stepmother would like him to do so. Yet when he watched Tom puffing away, and apparently thoroughly enjoying his cigarette, he told himself there really could be no possible harm in his trying one, just to see what it was like. So he allowed himself to be persuaded; and, after much coughing, because the smoke would go down his throat, and up the back of his nose, he succeeded in getting through one cigarette.
Then Tom suddenly remembered that his father would be wanting him, and made his way home, chuckling to himself as he went, whilst Theodore slowly rose to his feet, and turned towards the Hall.
But how queer he felt,—so sick, and everything seemed to be spinning round. He never quite remembered how he crawled home, but when at length he staggered into the nursery, Jane uttered an exclamation of dismay, and Jack gave a shrill scream of fright at the sight of his ghastly face.
"Oh, Master Theodore, my darling; what is it?" Jane cried, as she rang the bell violently, and caught the boy as he staggered, and would have fallen.
"I am very ill, Jane," he moaned; "very ill!"
In a few minutes nearly everyone in the house had rushed to the nursery, the servants with frightened faces, Mrs. Barton pale and trembling, and her husband no less alarmed. Jane held the boy in her arms, calling him by every endearing name she could think of, until Mr. Barton took him from her, and laid him on a sofa.
Theodore looked, as he said, very ill; but as his father leaned over him a sudden suspicion made him ask:
"What have you been doing, Theodore?"