“Now stop,” cried Barbara to herself, as she was folding it. “I ought to send him a five pound note, for he may not have the means to come; and I don’t think I have one of that amount in the house.”
She looked in her secretaire. Not a single five-pound note. Out of the room she ran, meeting Joyce, who was coming along the corridor.
“Do you happen to have a five-pound note, Joyce?”
“No, ma’am, not by me.”
“I dare say Madame Vine has. I paid her last week, and there were two five-pound notes amongst it.” And away went Barbara to the gray parlor.
“Could you lend me a five-pound note, Madame Vine? I have occasion to enclose one in a letter, and find I do not possess one.”
Madame Vine went to her room to get it. Barbara waited. She asked William what Dr. Martin said.
“He tried my chest with—oh, I forget what they call it—and he said I must be a brave boy and take my cod-liver oil well, and port wine, and everything I liked that was good. And he said he should be at West Lynne next Wednesday afternoon; and I am to go there, and he would call in and see me.”
“Where are you to meet him?”
“He said, either at papa’s office or at Aunt Cornelia’s, as we might decide. Madame fixed it for papa’s office, for she thought he might like to see Dr. Martin. I say, mamma.”