Her brother raised his bent head and looked keenly at her, while a sour smile passed over his face.
“Look here, Totty,” he answered, “don’t you think I should keep better in camphor?”
“How can you be so unkind!” exclaimed Totty, blushing scarlet. She rarely blushed at all, and her brother’s amusement increased, until it reached its climax and broke out in a hard, rattling laugh.
After this, Mrs. Trimm grew more cautious. She talked less of remedies and cures and practised with great care a mournfully sympathetic expression. In the course of a week or two this plan also began to wear upon Craik’s nerves, for she made a point of seeing him almost every day.
“I say, Totty,” he said suddenly. “If anybody is dead, tell me. If you think anybody is going to die, send for the doctor. But if they are all alive and well, don’t go round looking like an undertaker’s wife when the season has been too healthy.”
“How can you expect me to look gay?” Totty asked with a sad smile. “Do you think it makes me happy to see you going on in this way?”
“Which way?” inquired Mr. Craik with a pleased grin.
“Why, you won’t have massage, and you won’t take the milk cure, and you won’t go to Aix, and you won’t let me do anything for you, and—and I’m so unhappy! Oh Tom, how unkind you are!”
Thereupon Mrs. Trimm burst into tears with much feeling. Tom Craik looked at her for some seconds and then, being in his own house, rang the bell, sent for the housekeeper and a bottle of salts, and left Totty to recover as best she might. He knew very well that those same tears were genuine and that they had their source in anger and disappointment rather than in any sympathy for himself, and he congratulated himself upon having changed his will in time.
The old man watched George Wood’s increasing success with an interest that would have surprised the latter, if he had known anything of it. It seemed as if, by assuring him the reversion of the fortune, Tom Craik had given him a push in the right direction. Since that time, indeed, George’s luck had begun to turn, and now, though still unconscious of the wealth that awaited him, he was already far on the road to celebrity and independence. The lonely old man of business found a new and keen excitement in following the doings of the young fellow for whom he had secretly prepared such an overwhelming surprise. He was curious to see whether George would lose his head, whether he would turn into the fatuous idol of afternoon tea-parties, or whether he would fall into vulgar dissipation, whether he would quarrel with his father as soon as he was independent, or whether he would spend his earnings in making the old gentleman more comfortable.