‘We struck that little kid in the yard just now–the one who nearly gave you scarlet fever,’ Christopher went on gaily. ‘He came to know how you were, or something. Bobby Hearne, I think he called himself. Well, we got him to go to the doctor’s house with a message from his aunt, who lives five miles t’other side of Crofts, to say that she had just fallen downstairs and nearly killed herself, and would he go to her at once! Thirty miles there and back, all for nothing! Rather a score, eh? It was my idea, too, not Peter’s!’
He turned to Barbara for approval, and found her sobbing bitterly. She had heard every word he said, with horrible distinctness, though his voice had come from such a long way off. She had tried to stop him, but she could not make a sound till she began to cry.
‘Babe! I say, don’t! What’s up, old girl?’ exclaimed Kit, staring at her in consternation. At any time it was an event, to make the Babe cry, but now that she was so ill, he felt nothing short of a brute.
Jill had slipped into the room and was bending over the excited child.
‘Kit doesn’t understand–he doesn’t know he’s not really a beast–he isn’t a beast, is he?’ gasped Barbara, between her sobs. ‘He’s played a horrible trick on him–he’s sent him seven times round the world; and I never meant him really to walk seven times round the world–you know I didn’t, Jill. It’s all my fault for turning him out of my kingdom–if I hadn’t turned him out of my kingdom, he wouldn’t be wandering seven times round––’
‘Hush!’ whispered Jill, and she gave Christopher a look that sent him stumbling out of the room in a mixture of bewilderment and remorse. Up and down the landing he paced, feeling desperately wicked and desperately foolish by turns, until Jill opened the door of the bedroom and beckoned to him. She held a thermometer in her hand, and she paid no attention whatever to the shamefaced inquiry he stammered out.
‘Send Miss Finlayson here at once, and say I want the Doctor,’ she commanded, and went hurriedly back into the room.
Clearly, she was very angry with him, and it had never seemed possible before that Jill could be angry with any one. But it was not this that suddenly made Kit turn cold and funny all over as he started along the gallery with Jill’s message. He pulled up short with a jerk, and gave a little cry of dismay.
‘What shall I do?’ he exclaimed in a despairing tone. ‘I’ve sent the Doctor fifteen miles in the opposite direction.’