“O, but they really have been very bad. Mary Martin has had the fever, but she is getting better. And there’s Johnny Giles; you know what a strong boy he is. He’s very bad, poor little chap—so delirious; and I do feel so sorry for his poor mother. And young Mrs. Peter has it, and two of her children.”
“It must be contagious,” cried Greswold, seizing his daughter’s round white arm with an agitated movement. “You have not been to see any of them, have you, Lola?” he asked, looking at her with unspeakable anxiety.
“No; Bell wouldn’t let me go to see any of them; but of course I have taken them things every day—wine and beef-tea and jelly, and everything we could think of; and they have had as much milk as they liked.”
“You should not have gone yourself with the things, darling. You should have sent them.”
“That would seem so unkind, as if one hardly cared; and Puck with nothing to do all the time but to drag me about. It was no trouble to go myself. I did not even go inside the cottages. Bell said I mustn’t.”
“Bell was right. Well, I suppose there is no harm done if you didn’t go into any of the cottages; and it was very sweet of you to take the things yourself; like Red Riding Hood, only without the wolf. There goes the gong. I hope you are hungry.”
“Not very. The weather is too warm for eating anything but strawberries.”
He looked at her anxiously again, ready to take alarm at a word.
“Yes, it is too warm in this south-western country,” he said nervously. “We’ll go to Scotland next week.”
“So soon?”