They were there now, seated at a table covered with books and papers, he busied in drawing plans for a building, she equally so with her lessons.
But presently, at the sound of a deep sigh from her father, she glanced hastily up at him.
He had dropped his pencil and was leaning back against the cushions of his easy-chair, with a face so wan and weary that she started up in alarm, and springing to his side, exclaimed, "Dear papa, I am sure you are not well! Do stop working, and lie down on the sofa. And won't you let me tell Patrick to go for the doctor when he has taken mamma to Riverside?"
"Yes, Evelyn, I think you may," he answered in low feeble tones, and with a sad sort of smile, gently pressing the hand she had laid in his, as he spoke. "It will do no harm for me to see Dr. Taylor, even should it do no good."
"What is that? send for the doctor? Are you ill, Eric?" asked a lady who had entered the room just in time to catch his last sentence.
"I am feeling unusually languid, Laura," he replied; "yet not much more so than I did yesterday. Perhaps it is only the heat."
"The heat!" she echoed; "why, it is a delightful day! warm, to be sure, but not oppressively so."
"Not to you or me, perhaps, mamma," remarked Evelyn, "but we are well and strong, and poor papa is not."
"A holiday would do you good, Eric," the lady said, addressing her husband; "come, change your mind and go with me to Riverside."
"My dear," he said, "I should like to go to gratify you, but really I feel quite unequal to the exertion."