As they entered, a pale attenuated lad of about seventeen, who was lying back in an easy-chair, with his head supported by a pillow, and a book in his hand, turned to them slightly, and his unnaturally large eyes had in them rather a wondering look, which was succeeded by a smile as the professor strode to his side, and took his long, thin, girlish hand.
“Why, Lawrence, my boy, I did not know you were so ill.”
“Ill? Nonsense, man!” said the lawyer shortly. “He’s not ill. Are you, my lad?”
He shook hands rather roughly as he spoke from the other side of the invalid lad’s chair, while Mrs Dunn gave her hands an impatient jerk, and went behind to brush the long dark hair from the boy’s forehead.
He turned up his eyes to her to smile his thanks, and then laid his cheek against the hand that had been smoothing his hair.
“No, Mr Burne, I don’t think I’m ill,” he said in a low voice. “I only feel as if I were so terribly weak and tired. I get too tired to read sometimes, and I never do anything at all to make me so.”
“Hah!” ejaculated the lawyer.
“I thought it was the doctor come back,” continued the lad. “I say, Mr Preston—you are my guardian, you know—is there any need for him to come? I am so tired of cod-liver oil.”
“Yah!” ejaculated the lawyer; “it would tire anybody but a lamp.”
He snorted this out, and then blew another blast upon his nose, which made some ornament upon the chimney-piece rattle.