“And how is John?” I asked soberly.
“John! Why, John’s pretty much as usual, I think,” said Martha, with a sharp touch of asperity in her voice. “But somehow he seems to be everlastingly complaining of late, and it’s ‘Oh, my leg! Oh, my back!’ nearly all day long.”
“Then he must be really ill.”
“Not he. He’s just taken a lazy fit, and wants pampering, that’s all.”
“Which he isn’t likely to get from the wife o’ his buzzim,” broke in John’s voice at this juncture.
“Oh, John, I quite forgot!” I exclaimed penitently. “The vicar is waiting for you on the steps. He has got some liniment for you.”
John hobbled off at once, calling out, as he did so: “There’s a letter waiting for you upstairs, Miss Dora.”
Aroused to sudden curiosity, I at once ran up to my old room, and almost cried with joy to see Lady Elizabeth’s beloved handwriting. If my father’s missive lacked sympathy, his wife’s made ample amends for it, for it breathed of nothing but love and anxious care for my well-being. It had been taken for granted by my stepmother that I would come straight to the Grange and wait quietly there for the return of the rest of the family. I resolved to perpetuate her comforting delusion as long as I could, and forthwith wrote her a letter, in which I thanked her warmly for all the nice messages she sent me, and assured her that she need have no uneasiness about me, as I should make myself quite comfortable while at Moorbye.
Then I sallied out to the stables, having wondered already how it was that I had seen nothing either of Bobby or of Teddy. Even as I got quite up to the stable door they were both still invisible, and a vague feeling of impending calamity seized me, as the old familiar whistle, to which my erstwhile playmates had been wont to respond so joyously, failed to evoke the usual boisterous signs of recognition from either of them. I certainly did hear a feeble whine, but could hardly credit it to be Bobby’s usually clamorous voice.
“Oh, my God!” I thought dumbly, “is a new trouble about to befall me?”