"I have been wishing you could be with me"
"I ought to row you like smoke, but when you say things like that, I can't. Don't you know you oughtn't to go projecting around in the woods all alone?"
"I have always done it, haven't I? And Hector was with me till a few minutes ago, when he took it into his foolish old head to run after a rabbit. Is your mother any better this afternoon?"
"Sit down," he commanded abruptly. "I want to talk to you."
She hung the bunch of holly on the twigged limb of a small oak and sat down on a moss-covered rock. Tom sprawled at her feet in the dry leaves, and for a little while he was silent.
"You haven't told me yet how your mother is," she reminded him.
"She is just the same; lying there so still that you have to look close to see whether she is breathing. The doctor says that if there isn't a change pretty soon, she'll die."
"O Tom!"
He looked up at her with the old boyish frown pulling his eyebrows together.