The mother sat down in a chair while they pressed round her.
“Yes, it is rather a big thing,” she said. “In one month, little girls, [we are going] to Australia.”
[98]
]CHAPTER IX
TRAVELS IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES
Surely this was a great step Mrs. Conway had decided, almost by herself, upon taking? To cut herself adrift from friends and relatives, to leave this land of her birth, and her father’s and children’s births, to cross those thousands and thousands of miles of sea and to start life entirely afresh in some strange country, a solitary woman with three little children depending upon her for their very bread.
Sometimes her heart grew faint at the thought of the immensity of her responsibilities. Then to strengthen herself she would sum up the reasons that urged her to take such a step.
Phyl’s increasing delicacy had made the doctor look very grave.
During the last illness of Mr. Conway and while death actually hovered about the place he had seen the uselessness of suggesting any change for the frail little girl. But now that all was over and the mother was desolately free, he told her, gently enough, but [99] ]with no hesitation, that if she remained in England her eldest daughter could not live.
Every winter found the chest more and more weak and exposed to the inclement weather. The slight colds that Dolly and Weenie caught and flung off so easily were each of them in Phyl’s case a menacing danger.
Mrs. Conway contended, day after day, with the problem. If she were rich she could fly off with her darling at the approach of winter to Southern France or the warm slopes of Italy.
But how could a widow, almost destitute, contend against so fierce and relentless a foe as the English climate?