When Geoff went up to the nursery, he saw Nurse had been crying, but when he asked what the Doctor really thought of Dodie, she told him she had no time to talk and that he had better go down to the other boys in the schoolroom as Dodie had to go straight to bed, and mustn't be disturbed by any noise.
Geoffrey did as he was bid, but with a heavy heart, feeling quite sure that Nurse's tears meant that Dodie was very ill. He could not play with Forbes and Jack, or even read, but sat by the fire, looking silently at the red coals, for an hour or more.
It was the greatest relief when Nurse at last came down and told him he might go upstairs and watch by Dodie's crib while she had her tea, and that was the beginning of a continual watching on the boy's part. Nurse finding how gentle and tender he was, and how noiselessly he could move about when he liked, did not object to his spending many hours by Dodie's crib, and indeed, in her great anxiety, she began to be thankful for the boy's presence. For the Doctor's report of Dodie had been serious. The child had caught a chill, and before many hours were over, Bronchitis declared itself, and notwithstanding the care and physic from which the doctor had hoped such great things, on Christmas Eve little Dodie went to Heaven with a smile on her face, and stretching out her little hands as if someone had come to fetch her.
"I think Mother must have come for her," said Geoffrey in a low voice, as they stood round the schoolroom fire talking about it all.
"Yes," said Jack between his sobs, "Perhaps she was sent to fetch her, lest she should be afraid of all the new people in Heaven. Even kind Abraham might frighten her a little, she was always afraid of people with beards—but she wouldn't mind them a bit, if Mother fetched her."
Geoffrey nodded quietly. He did not cry. He had not shed a tear.
When once little Dodie had breathed her last, all sense of his own loss vanished in the overwhelming thought of what his Father's sorrow would be, when he found Dodie had gone.
