“No, I am not,” said John, smiling at her. “I mean to go without any rebellion at all.”
“There’s my best lad,” said she fondly. “Change of scene is all pleasure, John. It’s not like going through a course of pills and powders.”
Well, they all went to the seaside, and at the end of five weeks they all came back again. John had to be assisted out of the carriage, from fatigue. There could be no mistake now.
After that, it was just a gradual decay. The sinking was so imperceptible that he seemed to be always at a stand-still, and some days he was as well as any one need be. His folk did not give up hope of him: no one does in such cases. John was cheerful, and often merry.
“It can’t be consumption,” Sir John would say. “We’ve nothing of the kind in our family; neither on his mother’s side nor on mine. A younger sister of hers died of a sort of decline: but what can that have to do with John?”
Why, clearly nothing. As every one agreed.
In one of Mr. Carden’s visits, Sir John tackled him as he was going away, asking what it was. The two were shut up together talking for a quarter-of-an-hour, Mr. Carden’s horses—he generally came over in his carriage—growing rampant the while. Sir John did not seem much wiser when the sitting was over. He only shuffled his spectacles about on his old red nose—as he used to do when perplexed. Talking of noses: you never saw two so much alike as his and the Squire’s, particularly when they went into a temper.
Not very long after they were back from the seaside, and directly after school met, the accident occurred to Barrington. You have heard of it before: and it has nothing to do with the present paper. John Whitney took it to heart.
“He is not fit to die,” Bill heard him say. “He is not fit to die.”