“Let me do it for you.”
“No, no, I can do it.”
Why couldn’t they leave him alone? Of course he could do it, he was not wholly incapacitated. Where was the catch? He must look such a fool fumbling here.
Good heavens! the boy looked ghastly. Why hadn’t she noticed before, it was Lorna’s having come that had excited her so that she had not seen. And as she helped him raise the sash she looked anxiously into his face, she did not like it, he seemed from his expression to be seeing things which she could not. But then how could he? He was not going to be ill? She blamed herself, how selfish of her to be gossiping with Lorna when he was ill and needed her. All this noise must be bad for him with the window open, but then it was air he wanted, and it was rather sticky to-day. Lorna must go. But it was as if the dear thing had guessed, for she was saying that she must fly now and that she knew her way and that no one was to show her out. But you couldn’t do that, Edward had left no servants, and as they went downstairs Lorna was told how the journey up a few weeks before had made the boy unaccountably seedy, how at first the noise seemed to worry him terribly, but that the new house would be quieter, and how worrying it all was. What could one do?
The soft sound of their murmuring at the bottom of the stairs and the roar of Oxford Street swept him away on a flood, but he was so tired that he seemed to sink in it to a place where the pitch was higher, the cars and everything more shrill as they darted along so far away, it seemed. The flowers were singing to themselves, or was it a bird? Birds lusting in trees which suddenly were round him, their notes screaming through the rich leaves. They were full of sap, hanging down thick hands to cover the nakedness of the branches on which birds sat mocking at him, for they could see and he could not. All Barwood was laughing at him because he had gone away, and by doing that had found out how helpless he was. He could not open the window, he could not go out.
Mamma was coming back, her footsteps rang heavily on the stairs, and as she came in and shut the door he roused himself, saying that he was only feverish and that it would pass with a night’s rest. She came up to him and laid her hand on his shoulder.
“Are you all right, dear?”
“Yes, yes, quite all right.”
Why did they go on nagging him?
“Shall I shut the window? Don’t you find this noise terrible?”