The whispering voice persisted in its plaint, the hot hands plucked at the sheet when other hands closed over them, holding them firmly, and the voice he was waiting for said quietly:
“My dear son, I am here.”
As the sick man raised his tired eyes to the grave grey face bent over him, his troubled mind was flooded with an immense content, his poignant restlessness was calmed.
“Good old father!” he said softly, and lay quite still.
The jokey man thought better of it, and didn’t die after all. In another week Basil and Viola were allowed to go and see him. They stood very hushed and solemn on either side of his bed, for he looked very thin and white, and was still lying right on his back, which made him seem more ill somehow. For quite a minute nobody said anything at all, till Basil, who held a large folded bracken leaf in his hand, laid it down on the jokey man’s chest and spread it out. A fish speckled with brown reposed in solemn glory in the midst.
“It’s for your dinner,” whispered Basil. “It’s only four ounces off the pound. I caught it myself two hours ago. Viola saw me do it. I think a ‘Coachman’s’ the best fly after all.”
IN DURANCE VILE
Gabrielle always remembered the day that the ringmaster of the circus came to see her pony jump. She was proud of her pony, who was dapple grey and Welsh, and could jump nine inches higher than himself.
Gabrielle was five, and had ridden without a leading rein for two years, but her father never let her jump Roland, the pony. So the pony jumped by himself, greatly to the edification of the ringmaster who had been bidden to see the feat.
While all this was going on, Nana called her to nursery tea, and as she trotted down the long yard, past the stables, and towards the drive, the ringmaster turned to Jack Ainslie, Gabrielle’s father, and said: “Has the little Missie hurt her foot? She’s a thought lame.”