“Good-night, mother, good-night, father—oh, good-night!”
“Good-night, my dears,” said Mr. Waring blandly, and seeing that they still waited he stooped down stiffly and kissed the foreheads of both of them, then, with the air of a man who has done his duty, he remarked,
“Dacre’s health seems to be more robust than his sister’s, I think you are wise in recommending something of an anti-febrile nature.”
The children were half out of the room by this time, and Mrs. Waring’s eyes followed them with a puzzled stare. Something had evidently been forgotten.
“Ah, of course,” she cried, her face lighting, and running forward she put a soft detaining hand on a shoulder of each of her children and laid a small kiss on the middle of Gwen’s cheek. Then she stooped to Dacre and did the same by him.
She wondered a little as she went up to Mary’s room why Gwen shuddered when she touched her.
“I wonder if she’s feverish,” she thought.—“Oh, what agonies of responsibility parents have to endure,” she sighed, with yearning self-pity, as soon as she reached the head of the stairs.
When the children got to the nursery, Dacre faced his sister with glaring eyes.
“Beast!” was his sole observation.
“Let me alone, oh, let me alone!” she cried, “and, Dacre, open the windows, I feel smothered.”