"What was it?" asked Geoff, sleepily still. "Was the house on fire?"
"Oh, Geoff, don't be silly!" said Elsa; "it's—it's much worse. Mamma has been so ill—she is still."
Geoff started up now.
"Do you want me to go for the doctor?" he said.
"The doctor has been twice already, and he's coming back at nine o'clock," she answered sadly. "He thought her a tiny bit better when he came the last time. But she's very ill—she must be kept most exceedingly quiet, and——"
"I'll get up now at once," said Geoff; "I won't be five minutes, Elsa. Tell mamma I'd have got up before if I'd known."
"But, Geoff," said Elsa, firmly, though reluctantly, "it's no use your hurrying up for that. You can't see her—you can't possibly see her before you go to school, anyway. The doctor says she is to be kept perfectly quiet, and not worried in any way."
"I wouldn't worry her, not when she's ill," said Geoff, hastily.
"You couldn't help it," said Elsa. "She—she was very worried about you last night, and she kept talking about your umbrella in a confused sort of way now and then all night. We quieted her at last by telling her we had given you one to go to school with. But if she saw you, even for an instant, she would begin again. The doctor said you were not to go into her room."
A choking feeling had come into Geoff's throat when Elsa spoke about the umbrella; a very little more and he would have burst into tears of remorse. But as she went on, pride and irritation got the better of him. He was too completely unused to think of or for any one before himself, to be able to do so all of a sudden, and it was a sort of relief to burst out at his sister in the old way.