“How did he say he felt?” asked Mr. Guildford, stopping for a moment as he was going to follow Miss Methvyn.
“He said he was sleepy,” she replied. “I asked him if he felt very ‘sore,’ that is his word for ‘ill,’” she explained with a faint little smile, “and he said, ‘Not so wenny bad, Cissy,’ He calls me ‘Cissy.’ ”
“Ah!” said Mr. Guildford. Then they went into the room, and Cicely led the stranger to the child’s bedside.
He lay there, propped up with pillows to ease his laboured breathing. He was sleeping, the girl had said, but, ah! what a different sleep from the rosy, easy rest of healthy infancy! It was very pitiful—terribly pitiful. Mr. Guildford looked at the child steadily for some moments. Then he turned to the young lady.
“Dr. Farmer has told me all that has been done,” he said. “Everything has been tried, I see. I should like to watch the little fellow for the next hour or two. I hear you have been up for two or three nights. Will you not go to bed now and let me, who am quite fresh, take my turn?”
For the first time there was a slight quiver in the pale young face as she looked up at Mr. Guildford.
“Won’t you tell me first what you think of him?” she said. “I have been so anxious to hear your opinion.”
Mr. Guildford turned away with a very, very slight gesture of impatience. He was beginning to be very sorry for Miss Methvyn, but he felt the position an uncomfortable one. He was by no means sure that it would be right to express his real opinion to this girl, so young and apparently so lonely. He wished Dr. Farmer had stayed; or at least that he could see the heads of the house, the child’s parents.
“I don’t think you should ask me for my opinion just yet,” he said somewhat brusquely. “If you will leave me here to watch him, I shall soon be able to judge better. Shall I not see your parents? Your father, perhaps I should say? I should like to speak to him about your little brother.”
“He is not my brother,” she answered quietly. “He is my nephew, my only sister’s child. My father is a chronic invalid and suffers a great deal, and my mother is constantly with him. That is why it is impossible for her to nurse Charlie. He is my especial charge; my sister left him in my care when she went to India some months ago. I fancied you understood or I would have explained this before.”