“But if you should chance to find me a cinder, when you thought it time for me to be waking, Ailwin—would not that be as bad as my having the fever?”
“Oliver! How can you talk so? How dare you think of such a shocking thing?”
“You put it into my head, Ailwin. But come—let me tell you a thing I want you to do, if I should be away when it stops raining. Here are Roger’s old clothes, safe and dry here between the beds. When it leaves off raining, make him pull off his wet finery, and put on his own dry things; and keep that finery somewhere out of his way, that I may put it back into the chest, where it ought to be lying now. Will you do this, Ailwin?”
“Why, I’ll see. If I was quite sure that he had nothing to do with this storm, I might manage him as I could any other boy.”
“Anybody may manage him to-day, with a little kindness. He is ill and weak-spirited; and you can touch his heart with a word. If you only remember how George cried after him, you will be gentle with him, I know.”
“Well, that’s true: and I doubt whether a lord would have spoken with him, if he had been so dangerous as he seems sometimes. Now, as to dinner to-day, Oliver—I really don’t like to give Mildred such food as the game on the island now is. I am sure it is downright unwholesome. Bird and beast, they are all dying off faster than we can kill them.”
“The fowls are not all done, I hope. I thought we had some meal-fed fowls left.”
“Just two; and that is all: and the truth is, I don’t like to part those two poor things, enjoying the meal-picking together; and then, they are the last of our wholesome food.”
“Then let us have them while they are wholesome. Boil one to-day, and make the broth as nice as you can for Mildred. We will cook the other to-morrow.”
“And what next day?”