“It would be no use just yet,” Miss Fortescue said sadly. “There cannot be anything more to hear for some time. While you are at your lessons, I think perhaps I will go round myself—not to go in, of course, but to speak to your mother through the window.”
“Lessons,” repeated Leila, “we can’t do lessons. We can’t be expected to.”
“My dears,” said their aunt, “you must do something. No one knows better than I do, how miserably trying such anxiety is, but it would be worse if you hung about doing nothing. One must face these things in life, and try to be patient. Sickness and sorrow come to all.”
Then for the first time Chrissie spoke.
“Yes,” she said, “I suppose they do, but—oh, oh—if it was only that!” and so saying, she rushed out of the parlour and locked herself into the little bedroom that she shared with Leila.
“Poor Chrissie,” said Miss Fortescue, and the knowledge of what her sister was feeling made Leila look up sharply. Did Aunt Margaret suspect anything? She was moving away, when Miss Fortescue went on speaking. “Leave her alone for a little. You can keep some breakfast for her on the side-table. Finish your own, and then the things must be cleared, and you can get out your books,” and Leila, herself in a turmoil of misery, silently obeyed.
And somehow or other the morning passed. With swollen eyes and burning cheeks Chrissie came back after a while and drank some milk, and the two went through a sort of pretence of lessons with kind Miss Greenall, who was patience and gentleness personified. Then Aunt Margaret came in, but with no cheering report.
“Just the same,” she said; and after dinner she made the children come out with her for an hour or two, and in a dull stupor of wretchedness they paced along beside her, feeling as if nothing in all the world mattered in the least, if only Jasper were well again, or—crueller still—if only they had not been the cause of this terrible illness!
For by this time, I think, Leila’s misery and self-reproach were as severe as Chrissie’s.
Later in the evening Miss Greenall, as had been arranged, went off again for news. It was nearly the children’s bedtime when she returned, and catching sight of her face as she came into their sitting-room, Miss Fortescue turned quickly to them.