"Ah, you don't understand, Frederick," answered his wife, with a plaintive smile.
And May felt indignant at her uncle's want of feeling. But the next minute she relented towards him when he said, as he rose from table—
"I'll go round to the chemist's myself for Willy's medicine, and bring it back with me, as I suppose you will be wanting James to go out again with the carriage by-and-by."
"Is one of the little boys ill?" asked May.
This time it was her aunt who replied calmly, "Oh no. The child has a little nervous cough; it is really more a trick than anything else."
"Huggins doesn't think so lightly of it, I can assure you. He tells me great care is needed," said Mr. Dormer-Smith.
"Can I—would you mind—might I see my little cousins?" asked May, with some hesitation. She was puzzled by these discrepancies of opinion between husband and wife.
Mr. Dormer-Smith turned round with a look almost of animation. "Come now, if you like. Come with me," he said. And May followed him out of the room, disregarding her aunt's suggestion that it would be better for her to lie down and rest after her journey.
The nursery was a large room—in fact, an attic—at the top of the house. May noticed how rapidly the elegance and costliness of the furniture and appointments decreased as they mounted. If the dining-room and drawing-rooms represented tropical luxury, the bedrooms cooled down into a temperate zone; and the top region of all was arctic in its barrenness. The nursery looked very forlorn and comfortless, with its bare floor, cheap wall-paper dotted with coarse, coloured prints, and its small grate with a small fire in it, which had exhausted its energies in smoking furiously, as the smell in the room testified. At a table in the middle of the room sat a hard-featured young woman, with high cheek-bones, and a complexion like that of a varnished wooden doll, mending a heap of linen; and in one corner, where stood a battered old rocking-horse and a top-heavy Noah's Ark, two little boys were kneeling on the floor, building houses with wooden bricks. On their father's entrance, they looked up languidly; but when they saw who it was, they scrambled to their feet with some show of pleasure, and came to stand one on each side of him, holding his hands. They were both like him, blue-eyed and sandy-haired, and both looked pale and sickly. Harold, the elder, seemed the stronger of the two. Wilfred was a meagre, frail-looking little creature, with a half-timid, half-sullen expression of face. Their father kissed them both, and, sitting down, drew the younger child on his knee, whilst Harold stood pressing close against his shoulder.
"Well, do you know who this is?" asked Mr. Dormer-Smith, pointing to May.