“He wants to see his lawyer, and try to get things on a footing of some sort between his mother and him.”
“That is very proper,” he replied, with his hand on the lock.
“But you don't think it would be safe for him to travel to-night—do you, uncle—so soon after his illness?” I asked.
“No, I cannot say I do. It would not be safe. He is welcome to stop till to-morrow.”
“Will you not tell him so, uncle? He is bent on going!”
“I would rather not see him! There is no occasion. It will be a great relief to me when he is able—quite able, I mean—to go home to his mother—or where it may suit him best.”
It was indeed like death to hear my uncle talk so differently about John. What had he done to be treated in this way—taken up and made a friend of, and then cast off without reason given! My dear uncle was not at all like himself! To say he forgot our trouble and danger, and never came near us in our sore peril, when we owed our deliverance to him! and now to speak like this concerning John! Something was terribly wrong with him! I dared hardly think what it could be.
I stood speechless.
My uncle opened the door, and went down the steps. The sound of his feet along the corridor and down the stair to the kitchen, died away in my ears. My life seemed to go ebbing with it. I was stranded on a desert shore, and he in whom I had trusted was leaving me there!
I came to myself a little, got the two five-pound-notes, and returned to John.