“No, my dears; you must hear what I am going to say, so you may as well hear it now.”
“Oh, no, Eli,” moaned the invalid.
“Very well, my dears, you had better go,” said the Rector, and he led his daughters to the door, which he opened and closed after them with quiet dignity.
“Row on!” muttered Cyril. “Well, ma, dear, how are you?”
“Not—not quite so well, Cyril,” she said, fondly; and her voice trembled, as she dreaded a scene. “Will you come and sit down here by me?” she added, pointing to a chair.
“Yes, I may as well,” he said, laughingly, “and you can take care of me, for I see somebody means mischief.”
The Rector bit his lips, for his was a painful task. He wished to utter a severe reprimand, and to appeal to the young man’s sense of right and wrong, while here at the outset was the mother bird spreading her protecting wing before her errant chick, and ready, the Rector saw, to stand up boldly in his defence.
“Let me punch up your pillow for you, dear,” said Cyril, bending over the couch, and raising the slight frame of the sick woman, whose arms closed softly round the young man’s neck, while he beat and turned the soft down pillow, lowering the invalid gently back into her former place, and kissing her tenderly upon the brow.
“That’s better,” he said. “I hate a hot pillow, and it’s so comfortable when it’s turned.”
Mrs Mallow clung fondly to her son for a few moments, smiling gratefully in his face; and the Rector sighed and again bit his lip as he saw how moment by moment his task was growing more difficult.