"There, there, save the bones," laughed Cousin Roxana, through her tears. "You're just like your father; oh, dear me, Kit, your dear splendid father."
"What's the matter with Dad?" demanded Kit, swift to catch the connection between her cousin's tears and words. "Did you get a letter?"
In silence Cousin Roxana handed over a telegram. It was from Miss Patterson at Palm Beach. They were to stop there after leaving Sanibel Island on the west coast. Kit read it breathlessly:
"Mr. Robbins worse. Sailing 2nd."
"You know, Kit, they'd never do that if there hadn't been a turn for the worse." There was a break in Cousin Roxana's voice as she reached for the telegram. "I just wish that I had him up home safe in the room he used to have when he was a boy. He had measles the same time I did when my mother was alive. That's your Aunt Charlotte, Kit, she that was Charlotte Peabody from Boston. But I always seemed to take after the Robbins' side 'stid of the Peabody, they said, and Jerry was just like own brother to me. I wish I had him away from doctors and trained nurses, and old Doctor Gallup tending him. I've seen him march right up to Charon's ferryboat and haul out somebody he didn't think was through living."
Kit stood with her hands clasped behind her head, looking down at the pines, their branches lightly crystalled with snow and ice. Somehow it didn't seem as if God could let her big, splendid father slip out of the world just when they all needed him so much. During all the months of illness, the girls had not grasped the seriousness of it. He only seemed weak and not himself. They knew he had had to give up his work temporarily, that he never went to the office in New York any more, that it was even an effort for him to give orders over the telephone, but they had taken these things as of little moment.
Perhaps only Jean had really gleaned the real import of her mother's anxious face, the steady daily visits of the nerve specialist, and, last of all, the consultation two days before they had left for the South.
Kit closed her eyes and wrinkled her face as if with a twinge of sharp pain. "It's going to be awful," she said softly, "just awful for Mother."
Cousin Roxana squared her ample shoulders unconsciously, and lifted her double chin in challenge to the worry that the next few days might hold.
"It's more awful for you poor children and Jerry. We women folks are given special strength to bear just such trials; we've got to be strong."