When all business affairs had been wound up and all legalities finished with, she found there remained to her nothing in the world but the four hundred pounds left of Phyl’s and Dolly’s little fortune. She was pondering on the possibility of eking out an existence on that in some cheap French village, when the treacherous November wind caught the child again, and made the doctor more and more convinced that the young life would not flicker very much longer unless some radical change were wrought.
“The only hope I can hold out to you, Mrs. Conway,” he said at last, “is that you should take the little girl for a long sea voyage. And keep her away for all time from these vile winters.”
Mrs. Conway explained her straitened means, and [100] ]how four hundred was the whole of her worldly wealth.
“Well, many would be glad of that amount,” he said thoughtfully; “of course you will have to work for your children, but that”—he looked at her quiet, resolute face and her mouth’s firm lines—“I know you are prepared for. Has Australia ever suggested itself to you?”
Mrs. Conway gasped a little at the boldness of the idea, but the doctor had so much to say in favour of the new land, the chances for work there, the climate, the voyage that would give Phyl a new lease of life, that when he went away she sat thinking, thinking for hours.
She did not ask many people’s advice; the friend and lawyer of the family, her brother, and one or two other relatives and friends, came to the quiet Warwickshire home and went into the matter gravely with her; no one actually advised against it since poor Phyllida’s life seemed at stake, but no one was very sanguine. Still there seemed no other thing on earth to be done, and in one more week Mrs. Conway had gathered up her courage and finally decided upon the step.
It took quite a long time that first night to make the children’s queer little heads realize all that the wonderful statement meant. Then Weenie was the only one who chattered; Phyl and Dolly, with eyes lustrous with excitement, only gazed at each other [101] ]silently while the splendid thing revolved in their heads.
“Just like the Swiss Family Wobinson,” Dolly said at last in a low, odd voice. “Oh, Phyl, don’t you hope we’ll be wecked?”
“Oh, thank you, Dolly, but I think we’ll ask to be excused luxuries like that,” said Mrs. Conway. “I thought you objected so strongly a week ago to starving to death—where would be the difference?”
“Oh!” Dolly said, “of course I didn’t mean I hoped we’d get dwowned. Only just wecked on a dear little island where there were cocoa-nuts and things.”