“Well, Joe, I don’t quite see that,” returned the pater, twisting his lip. “Discipline and lessons are more in accordance with the season of Passion Week than kicking up your heels at large in all sorts of mischief; and that’s what you’d be at, you know, if you were at home. What’s the matter with Johnny.”
“He has been ill for three days, with a cold or something,” said Tod. “Tell it for yourself, Johnny.”
I had no more to tell than that. For three or four days I had felt ill, feverish; yesterday (Wednesday) had done no lessons. Mrs. Todhetley thought it was an attack of influenza. She sent me to bed, and called in the doctor, Mr. Duffham.
I was better the next day—Good Friday. Old Duff—as Tod and I called him for short—came in while they were at church, and said I might get up. It was slow work, I told him, lying in bed for one’s holidays. He was a wiry little man, with black hair; good in the main, but pompous, and always carried a gold-headed cane.
“Not to go out, you know,” he said. “You must promise that, Johnny.”
I promised readily. I only wanted to be downstairs with the rest. They returned home from church, saying they had promised to go over and take tea with the Sterlings; Mrs. Todhetley looked grave at seeing me, and thought the doctor was wrong. At which I put on a gay air, like a fellow suddenly cured.
But I could not eat any dinner. They had salt fish and cold boiled beef at two o’clock—our usual way of fasting on Good Friday. Not a morsel could I swallow, and Hannah brought me some mutton-broth.
“Do you mind our leaving you, Johnny?” Mrs. Todhetley said to me in her kind way—which Tod never believed in. “If you do—if you think you shall feel lonely, I’ll stay at home.”
I answered that I should feel very jolly, not lonely at all; and so they started, going over in the large carriage, drawn by Bob and Blister. Mr. and Mrs. Todhetley, with Lena, in front, Tod and Hugh behind. Standing at the window to watch the start, I saw Roger Monk looking on from the side of the house.
He was a small, white-faced chap of twenty or so, with a queer look in his eyes, and black sprouting whiskers. Looking full at the eyes, when you could get the chance, which was not very often, for they rarely looked at you, there was nothing wrong to be seen with them, and yet they gave a sinister cast to the face. Perhaps it was that they were too near together. Roger Monk was not one of our regular men; for the matter of that, he was above the condition; but was temporarily filling the head-gardener’s place, who was ill with rheumatism. Seeing me, he walked up to the window, and I opened it to speak to him. “Are you here still, Monk?”