“Ah! but you’re a man.”
“I only want mother to come back to be perfectly happy,” Dick said, gravely. “You don’t know mother. She could stand anything but rebuke. That sermon of father’s must have almost done for her. Nothing could be more terrible in her eyes than to be held up to contempt. You must make allowances for mother, Dora.”
“She must be wretchedly unhappy,” Dora agreed. “Yet, she writes no letters that give any clue to her feelings.”
“No, the letters she sends are merely to let us know where she is—never a word about father.”
“Does she know how ill he has been?”
“Well, you see, I can’t write much, and I hesitated to say anything that would hurt her feelings. I said he’d been very ill, but was mending slowly, and we hoped to see him himself again in a week or two.”
“Does she know that he has given up St. Botolph’s?”
“Yes, I told her that.”
“She makes no mention of coming home?”