“Yes,” replied her aunt. By this time they were on their way to church. “Yes, that is true. Still, that is really a small trouble compared to what might have been, if—” and though she said no more they understood.
She was not one to “pile on the agony” or to tell them how almost overwhelmingly difficult it was to meet these utterly unlooked-for expenses.
“They are so young still,” she said to herself, “but it is delightful to see real consideration and thoughtfulness beginning gradually to grow in them.”
The spring, unfortunately, was a cold and late one that year. April was fairly advanced before the doctor gave leave for Jasper to be taken away for change of air, or to do more than walk up and down for a very few minutes in the best time of the day. A sadly thin and white little creature he looked the morning that, as had been promised, the four-wheeler, with luggage on the top and his mother and himself inside, drove slowly past Mrs Greenall’s house, where Leila and Chrissie and Aunt Margaret were eagerly on the look-out. Then there were nods and smiles and kissings of hands—but when the little girls drew their heads in again and shut the window, their aunt was scarcely surprised to see that there were tears in their eyes.
“He does look so ill,” they murmured, “and poor Mummy taking him away all alone, without a nurse or a maid.”
“They will be all right when they get to Seabay,” she replied; “for there they will be at your old nurse’s mother’s. You have often been there—it is so near Fareham. She has a nice little house with two rooms that she lets. It would not have done to go to a hotel, even if we could have afforded it, just for fear of any lingering infection, though your mother says Jasper has been bathed and carbolic-ed and I don’t know all what—and their clothes stoved and boiled! In a fortnight or so from now, the house will be perfectly safe, and we shall be able to go back there and make everything nice for them to return to,” she added cheerfully.
But still the children sighed.
“I’m glad they’re going to Seabay,” said Leila, “only it’ll make Mummy rather sad to be so near Fareham and for it not to be ours any more.”
“My dears,” said their aunt, “I truly do believe that nothing of that kind could make her sad just now. All her heart is filled with thankfulness—and, my little girls, hopefulness too. She is looking forward to a happier home life than you have ever yet had, and I do not think she will be disappointed?”
“We do mean to try,” murmured Chrissie, and the way in which the simple, humble words were said showed that the good seed had taken root.