"There, my laddies, you eat away at them oranges, and don't you cry no more. Come, come," she added, as Jack hid his face in her large white apron sobbing, "don't you take on my beauty like that, you'll make yourself sick. Be a good boy now, and try one of them oranges, they'll make you feel better—see if they don't," and wiping Jack's tears away with her apron, and giving him a hearty kiss, nurse's comfortable figure disappeared hurriedly from the room, for she was busy and was afraid of being delayed by the sound of her boy's sobbing, which sound made her kind old heart ache, for blue-eyed Jack was her darling.
Left to themselves Forbes and Jack surveyed the oranges gravely, then the latter, still quivering with sobs, put out his hand to take one; Forbes followed his example. They both glanced at Geoffrey at this juncture, but the look of their elder brother as he sat crouching over the fire, was too miserable to allow of the thought of offering him one. So with heavy hearts, they made holes at the top of their oranges, into which they stuck lumps of sugar, and began to suck them, their tears mingling with the juice.
But the oranges were very good, and deliciously juicy, and just for the moment the cause of their tears was so forgotten, that Jack's orange suddenly bursting and the juice flying up into Forbes' face, a faint chuckle escaped the boys.
Geoffrey turned his sad face towards them, looking both shocked and surprised. Could they really be laughing? He had thought they would none of them ever be able to laugh again, he was quite sure he never could.
Only the other side of the nursery wall their dear dead mother lay, with that wonderful awful calm on her sweet face. How could they laugh after having seen her for the last time—or—had they forgotten—could they have forgotten?
Forbes coloured to the roots of his hair, as he caught sight of that look on Geoffrey's face, and pushing his plate away from him, felt ashamed of having been able to enjoy his orange. He knew Geoffrey could not have eaten a morsel of it. Indeed he had scarcely eaten anything since she had died.
Forbes hated and despised himself for eating that orange, and for actually wanting another.
Jack, notwithstanding that look on Geoffrey's face, was about to take a second. Forbes could have kicked him, particularly as there was something quite sly in the way he smuggled it into his plate, in the hope that Geoffrey would not see, winking at his brother as he did it.
"There my laddies, you eat away at them oranges, and don't you cry no more."