As the doctor carried her across the hall, Gabrielle put her arms round his neck, and kissed him on both his eyes.
“Your eyes taste very salt!” she said, “But you are the best doctor in the world!”
THE SURRENDER OF LADY GRIZELL
Geordie had found the world a rather draughty place since that March morning when his mother went out hunting and was brought back in a strange secret fashion, and he saw her face no more.
“Your poor Ma’s met with a haccident, Master Geordie—poor lady she’ve broke her back and now she’s gone to ’Eaven.”
So Nana explained things to him. New black clothes came from the tailor’s, and Geordie went with Nana to lay flowers upon his mother’s grave.
At five years old discomfort is felt, rather than defined; Geordie was conscious of a difference, an uncomfortable difference in his surroundings, but by no means directly traced its cause to the loss of his mother. Nor was he actively miserable. It is true that he sometimes wondered why Nana so often omitted his bath in the morning, and why he was never dressed to go down in the evening; but in some respects he had quite a dissipated time. So many people asked him out to tea, and amusement of which Nana distinctly approved, for she went too.
Geordie regarded his father with immense admiration, he was so tall, and handsome, and jolly. But since that day when everything was altered, the Hon. Donald Cochran found less time than ever to devote to Geordie. It is true he did not go out hunting any more, but he seemed always to be shut up in that hitherto almost unused room—called the “study,” sorting papers and interviewing stout gentlemen, who wore aggressive watch-chains, and whose footsteps were much lighter than those of the hunting friends who used to come about the house.
After a month of vague loneliness and discomfort there came a change in Geordie’s fortunes. His aunt, Lady Grizell Fane, who had been abroad at the time of Mrs. Cochran’s death, appeared upon the scene.
A tall woman, with keen grey eyes, a woman who observed much and said little—Lady Grizell after three days realized the exact position of affairs. On the fourth day she went back to the Towers, taking Geordie with her.