"When?"
"As soon as you can make your arrangements. I know you can't do that in a moment, but, of course, he could not be moved just yet. When he is strong enough Aileen could take him somewhere until you were ready. But get him to the country. His poor little head is full of stories and make-believes: let him forget what a book looks like, and introduce him to a pony. By the way, it's going to be enormously good for you and Aileen, too."
"Is it?" Macleod asked, smiling grimly. "I'll worry along somehow, though I know mighty little of anything outside a city. But it's rough on her, poor girl. She just loathes the country—hasn't any use for scrub and bad roads, and discomfort generally. I'll never be able to get her a servant—there aren't any, I believe, once you get more than a mile from a picture theatre. And she has never had to work."
"Don't you worry your head about Aileen," said the little doctor, rising. "She has her head screwed on the right way—and women have a way of doing what they've got to do. She can imagine herself her own grandmother, fresh out from England, and tackling the Bush as all our plucky little grandmothers did. Pity there are not more like them now: we live too softly nowadays, and our backbones don't stiffen. But you'll find Aileen will come out all right. In a year you'll all be blessing me. When you come to think of it, I'm the only one to be pitied. I'm going to miss you badly." There was a twisted smile on his lips as he wrung his friend's hand. "Good-bye: my patients will be calling down maledictions on my head if I don't hurry."
Macleod saw him into his dusty motor and watched it glide down the hot street. Then he turned and went back through the scent of the garden, instinctively making his footsteps noiseless as he crossed the veranda and entered the house.
It was a trim house of one story, with a square hall where tall palms gave an effect of green coolness. An embroidered curtain screened a turn into a passage where, through an open door, could be heard the sound of a low voice reading. A childish call cut across the soft tones.
"Is that you, Daddy?"
"That's me," said Macleod cheerfully, if ungrammatically. "Are you sure you ought not to be asleep?" He entered the room and smiled down at his little son.
"A fellow can't sleep all day," Garth said. "'Sides, I needn't sleep so much now. Doctor says I'm nearly well, Daddy."
"That's good news," said his father heartily. "We'll have you out in the garden soon, and getting fat. The tulips are blossoming, Garth, and your poor old goldfish is awfully lonesome. He says even Bran doesn't go near him now."