"'Cos Baba does. She loves him awful, drefful much," and to give her mother some glimmering idea of the depth of her affection, Baba clasped her hands round her own small person, and looked into Cicely's face, with another appealing glance.
"Christina, do you imagine Dr. Fergusson could be induced to come over here for Christmas?" Cicely questioned, as Baba's nurse came into the cosy boudoir at Bramwell Castle; "this picanniny of mine wants him invited to her Christmas-tree."
"I should think it would depend on how busy he is just now. The practice seemed to be a big one. But perhaps at this time people will be considerate enough not to fall ill, and will give the doctor a little rest. Surely, Dr. Fergusson could motor over? It can't be very far from here to Graystone."
"Quite within a motor drive; and he was so very good to Baba, I should like to ask him to come if he will. Rupert writes, that, as he feared, he cannot be with us. He has had to start off post haste to Naples. That tiresome boy, Jack Layton, a mutual cousin of Rupert's and mine, has gone and got typhoid there, and of course Rupert, being a sort of unattached, universal fairy godfather, has been sent for to look after him."
"Is Mr. Mernside a fairy godfather?" Christina smiled at the quaint nomenclature.
"I always think so. He is ready to do any thing for any of his aggravating relations, at any moment, and as Jack has selected this particular moment to get typhoid, Rupert will be away for Christmas. I wonder whether Dr. Fergusson would think it very odd and unconventional, if I invited him here, on our rather short acquaintance?"
Cicely looked thoughtfully across her pretty room at Christina, and the girl laughed, and shook her head.
"He is not so silly," she answered. "Dr. Fergusson is just one of those simple, straightforward men who take things as they are meant, and don't hunt round for ulterior motives. He won't even begin to think whether your invitation is conventional or unconventional, he will only think how good it is of you to ask him at all."
"How wise you are," Lady Cicely exclaimed; "where does that little dark head of yours get all its wisdom?"
Christina laughed again. In those days of her happy life with Baba and Baba's mother, her bright young laugh rang out very often—the laugh that seemed such a true index to her young, bright soul. She had put behind her all the misery and hardship of the past, and, with the wholesome philosophy natural to her, lived in the full enjoyment of her present content; and the few weeks of happiness, good food, and freedom from anxiety, had changed the white-faced, hollow-eyed girl who had perforce tried to pawn her mother's jewel, into a charming, and very pretty semblance of her former self.