Elsie took the baby, and sat down with him. She did not feel very much alarmed about her father. He had been brought home ill before, and soon got well again; and she had enough to occupy her mind in thinking about the scholarship, and how soon she would be able to go to the grammar school.
As soon as baby would let her, she seated him on the floor, and began to get the tea ready, as her father would be glad of a cup of tea when the doctor had gone—he always enjoyed a cup of tea so much. She set the kitchen door open, that she might hear the doctor go away; and then she would make the tea, and carry a cup upstairs for her father, and tell him that she had won the scholarship, and that would cheer him, she felt sure.
The doctor was a long time upstairs, she thought; but at last she heard him coming down. And she heard her mother speak when they got to the foot of the stairs; and she could tell her mother had been crying, by the tone of her voice.
"Keep him as quiet as possible, Mrs. Winn," said the doctor; "but I do not think it will be more than a week."
And then the door closed, and her mother ran upstairs again, without coming into the kitchen to see her and the children. And Elsie grew vaguely uneasy as she thought of the doctor's words—"I do not think it will be more than a week."
Surely he must mean that her father would not be ill more than "a week." And yet, as Elsie repeated these words to herself half aloud, that same creeping fear seemed to come over her again. And she resolved to take a cup of tea upstairs for her father, and then she would be able to see whether he looked worse than he did when he had been taken ill before.
So she made the tea, and a tiny square of toast, and then poured out a cup and put it on a tray, and carried it upstairs and tapped at the bedroom door.
"I have brought this for daddy," she said in a whisper, when Mrs. Morris opened the door a little way.
The friend took the tea. "It will do nicely for your mother," she said, "but your father cannot take tea now."
She did not wait for Elsie to ask the question she wished, but shut the door again, and Elsie went downstairs. And, after waiting some time and finding her mother did not come, she gave the younger children their tea, and then undressed baby ready to go to bed.