‘I can’t get rid of my cough, and I’m afraid it may turn to something dangerous. You said, I remember, that people with weak chests wintered in the Bahamas.’
‘Lionel can tell you all about it. He’ll be here to-morrow. Come and have a talk with him.’
‘No.’ He moved pettishly. ‘Tell me as much as you know yourself. I don’t feel well enough to meet people.’
Looking at him with profound compassion, Nancy thought it very doubtful whether he would see another winter. But she told him all she could remember about Nassau, and encouraged him to look forward with pleasure and hopefulness to a voyage thither.
‘How are you going to live till then?’
‘What do you mean?’ he answered, with a startled and irritated look. ‘I’m not so bad as all that.’
‘I meant—how are you going to arrange your life?’ Nancy hastened to explain.
‘Oh, I have comfortable lodgings.’
‘But you oughtn’t to be quite alone.—I mean it must be so cheerless.’
She made a proposal that he should have a room in this little house, and use it as a home whenever he chose; but Horace so fretted under the suggestion, that it had to be abandoned. His behaviour was that of an old man, enfeebled in mind and body. Once or twice his manner of speaking painfully reminded Nancy of her father during the last days of his life.