She went, obediently.
VII
A year passed. It was winter again, and the Gattys had had sickness in their house. Aggie had been ailing ever since the birth of the baby that had succeeded Emmy. And one evening the doctor had to be summoned for little Willie, who had croup. Willie, not four years old, was the last baby but three. Yes, he was only a baby himself; Aggie realized it with anguish, as she undressed him and he lay convulsed on her lap. He was only a baby; and she had left him to run about with Arty and Catty as if he were a big boy. She should have taken more care of Willie.
But the gods took care of Willie, and he was better before the doctor could arrive; and Aggie got all the credit of his cure.
Aggie couldn’t believe it. She was convinced the doctor was keeping something from her, he sat so long with Arthur in the dining-room. She could hear their voices booming up the chimney as she mended the fire in the nursery overhead. It was not, she argued, as if he ever cared to talk to Arthur. Nobody ever cared to talk to Arthur long, nor did he care to talk to anybody.
So, when the clock struck seven (the doctor’s dinner-hour), and the dining-room door never opened, Aggie’s anxiety became terror, and she stole down-stairs. She had meant to go boldly in, and not stand there listening; but she caught one emphatic word that arrested her, and held her there, intent, afraid of her own terror.
“Never!”
She could hear Arthur’s weak voice sharpened to a falsetto, as if he, too, were terrified.
“No, never. Never any more!”
There was a note almost of judgment in the doctor’s voice; but Aggie could not hear that, for the wild cry that went up in her heart. “Oh, never what? Is Willie—my Willie—never to be well any more!”