"He is in the hospital, and his life is in danger I fear, dear mother."
"My poor Marie!" sighed the old woman. "She loves Victor so well, and her heart would break were he to die. It will be hard enough anyway to part from him, even if he gets well."
Tad turned in amazement to Phil, who had followed him as he went to meet Mother Sophie.
"Part from him—if he gets well?" said he. "What does that mean, Phil?"
"Only that I have told Marie, and Father Jacques, and Mother Sophie the whole story," replied Phil, "so now they all know the truth about you and baby. Marie didn't want to give up the child, if once she managed to get him back from you, but her parents wouldn't hear of her keepin' him, after what I'd told them, so if he gets better, you and he and Marie 'll go back to England together if you like."
Tad was silent for a minute.
"Then maybe if I'd told the whole truth to the good people at the beginning, as you begged me to, Phil," he said at last, "I might have got my way without runnin' off with the child at all, and p'raps he wouldn't have been so ill neither."
Phil made no answer to this. What indeed could he say?
But Tad went on, "I say, Phil, what a fool I've been for my pains! Captain Jackson was right about kickin' agen the pricks, for here I've took lots of trouble to go crooked, just to find myself wuss off than if I'd gone straight, to say nothin' of makin' no end of bother for others."
"But now, Edouard," put in Mother Sophie, who understood no English, and had no idea what Tad was talking about, "now, Edouard, what do you intend to do? Will you return with your friend the captain this voyage, or—"