Harold's experience of being made well when he was sick was not of such a nature as to make this praise particularly attractive to him.
"I s'pose she gives you powders?" he said, in a disparaging tone, and then added gloomily, "I wouldn't go to her, if I was you."
May kissed him, and assured him that Granny's methods were all pleasant ones.
Wilfred—who had been kept outside the room during the financial transaction, as being too young to be trusted with a secret of such importance—was now admitted in compliance with his reiterated petition; and the two little fellows stood quietly watching their cousin, as in a hurried, feverish way, she put a few articles into her little bag, and took a fur-lined cloak out of the wardrobe, and laid her hat and gloves ready on the bed.
"I say, Cousin May," said Harold, all at once, "you'll come back again, sha'n't you?"
She looked down at the child's upturned face, with a start. It had not occurred to her before, but the thought now struck her that it was very likely she should never return to that house.
"I will see you again, darlings, if I live," she said, bending down to kiss and embrace the children.
Wilfred, always inclined to be tearful, showed symptoms of setting up a sympathetic wail. But Harold said, with a dogged little setting of the lips—
"Well, if you don't come back, I know what I shall do. I've got all those pennies left in the box, and I shall buy a stick and a bundle, and run away, and go along the high road ever so far, till I find you."
"I shall come too," cried Wilfred. "Papa gave me sixpence!"