“Don’t you think you’d better go?” urged grandfather. He, too, was disappointed, for he and grandmother rarely traveled and always enjoyed their little excursions together. “Don’t you think Janey’s mother might worry more than she need if you stay behind? She will think it more serious than it really is.”
“It is serious enough to make me unwilling to leave Janey,” answered grandmother positively. “I should worry every single instant if I were away from her. I could not stand it, not knowing how she is every minute. With her symptoms she might be coming down with almost anything.”
“But I don’t think she’s very ill,” put in Christopher again. “You just tell father and mother she’ll be all right in a week or two if they——”
“In a week or two!” exclaimed grandmother, looking ready to cry again. “I hope it is not going to be so long an illness as that!”
Christopher blushed and hung his head, while grandfather again urged the wisdom of going to town together as they had originally planned. But grandmother was firm. She changed her dress and went back to Jane’s room. Jane set up a wail when she heard that grandmother was to remain at home.
“I am not ill, grandmother, not a bit!” she moaned. “I—I——”
“Be careful, Jane,” called Christopher from the doorway of his own room. “You’ll—you’ll get sick again.”
Jane dropped back in bed and began to cry. Grandmother knelt down and did her best to comfort her, but Jane sobbed on quite heedlessly.
Grandfather and Christopher had to sit down to dinner alone, as grandmother would not leave Jane and grandfather could not wait or he would miss his train. It was rather a melancholy meal. Grandfather ate hardly anything and even Christopher’s appetite failed. He watched his grandfather off and rode on the step of the carriage as far as the gate, but he did not ask permission to go all the way to Hammersmith, for the sake of the ride, as grandfather and Joshua had both expected him to do.
“The boy seems quite unlike himself,” grandfather remarked to Joshua as they drove away. “He takes Janey’s illness very much to heart.”