“But you know, aunt, you mustn’t eat too much at dinner,” said Alys, gravely, “for if you feed a cold you’ll have to starve a fever. A little soup and a spoonful of jelly—anything more might be very dangerous.”
“Naughty girl, you are laughing at me now,” remonstrated poor Miss Winstanley, but Alys assured her solely that she was “quite, quite in earnest.”
And the partie carrée was a very cheerful one. Laurence seemed more light of heart than he had been for some time; Arthur, whose state of spirits was, to give him his due, seldom such as to cause his friends much anxiety, was even gayer and merrier than usual, almost feverishly so, it seemed to Alys once or twice, and yet again, when she caught his eyes fixed upon her with a sort of appealing anxiety in their expression that she never remembered to have seen in them before, she could have fancied, were such a fancy possible in connection with so light-hearted and thoughtless a being, that he, in his turn, had something on his mind. Could the mantle of Laurence’s recent anxiety have fallen upon him? she asked herself. It seemed so strange to associate anxiety of any kind with Arthur that she tried to dismiss the idea, and told herself that she must have grown morbid from being so much alone with Laurence, and fancying he was vexed or annoyed whenever he looked dull.
“Then it is all nicely settled about our staying in town, and going down to Romary together. It all depends on you, Arthur.”
Captain Beverley looked surprised.
“On me!” he exclaimed, “how do you mean? I thought it all depended on Miss Winstanley’s sore throat.”
“Oh! no. Laurence’s staying has nothing to do with aunt. He said he had business with you, but that you could settle it in town as well as at Romary, if you could stay—and so you will stay, won’t you? It would be so much nicer to go down all together.”
Captain Beverley looked increasingly mystified.
“I don’t understand—” he was beginning, but Mr Cheviott, whose attention had been caught by the sound of his own name, interrupted him.
“It is Alys herself who does not understand,” he said, good-humouredly, but not without a little constraint. “If you had been still at that delightful farm-house of yours, Arthur, I would have joined you there, and talked over these improvements. But that can wait, I dare say, and if you care to go into the financial part of it, we can do that in town as well. You are not in a hurry to go back to your new quarters, are you? You will wait and go back with us to Romary, as Alys wishes, won’t you?” Captain Beverley looked a little surprised, and a little disconcerted. He was not prepared for his cousin’s sudden interest in his improvements at Hathercourt, and hardly understood it, for hitherto Mr Cheviott had looked somewhat coldly on the schemes Arthur was full of, and he was still less prepared to be cross-questioned as to his length of stay in town, which in his own mind he had decided was to be a very short one.