Royal was standing by the carriage. He understood the meaning of the boxes, and looked wistfully from his little master to Winnie as if uncertain which to forsake. Frankie stooped and kissed him. "Good-by, Royal," he said; "you are hers now; mind you take good care of her. Winnie," with a faint attempt to smile as he turned again to his cousins, "I know you'll take good care of him."
The carriages drove away, and Brown not noticing the two children, shut the hall door. They stood on the wet steps looking through the darkness at the swiftly disappearing lights. They were too shocked and, as it were, stunned by Frankie's words to be able to realize all at once what they meant; but slowly, slowly, the full meaning dawned upon them. They were never to see little Frankie again. They had said their last good-by.
"Win, it can't be true! it can't be true!" exclaimed Murtagh.
"Oh, Myrrh, isn't it dreadful being children?" cried Winnie. "We can't go with him. Oh, I do hate Mr. Plunkett. I do hate him, so I do!" And Winnie, who seldom cried, threw herself down on the steps in a passion of tears.
CHAPTER XXIV.
The end was nearer than even the doctors had expected. Frankie caught cold on the journey, and two or three days after his departure a broken-hearted letter came from his poor mother saying that they were at an hotel in Dublin; they could get no further, for Frankie was dangerously ill. It was the first time she had ever admitted that there was danger in his illness, and when Mr. Blair gave the letter to Nessa to read, he said: "It was a matter of months before, now I am afraid it is a matter of days. Poor Jane!"
Poor Jane, indeed! Even while Mr. Blair was speaking, she was sitting in dumb despair in the darkened hotel bedroom holding her dead son's hand in hers. But at Castle Blair they did not yet know this, and neither Mr. Blair nor Nessa had thought it necessary to communicate to the children the bad news they had received of little Frankie's state. On the contrary, Nessa kindly devoted herself to cheering and amusing them in order that they might feel as little as possible the disappointment of not accompanying their cousin.
In this instance she succeeded marvelously. Winnie and Murtagh began to forget the trouble into which Frankie's words had thrown them. When they were alone and quiet it came back to them, but they had repeated to no one what he had said, and somehow in the midst of all their occupations the words began to seem unreal.
So it happened that three or four days after Frankie's departure, the children, having been with Nessa and Royal for a scramble across the fields, came in quite rosy with racing, and in a mood to think of some improvements that they desired to make in the fireplace of the island hut.