Mrs Raynsworth drew a long breath. This was not what she had feared, but it startled her. She grew rather pale.
“Charley!” she said.
“Don’t looked so appalled, mother,” he said, reassuringly. “I have not the least fear of there being anything seriously wrong; if I had had, of course I should have done something else—spoken to a doctor or to my father himself before frightening you. But I am perfectly sure it is overwork only; he should have a holiday—a holiday and a change. And that brings me to the second head of my discourse. Phil isn’t looking well, either. I believe the two of them have been buried in that study far too much and for far too long together. I should have been here at home some months ago, but it was impossible, so there is no use going back upon that. What I want now—”
But Mrs Raynsworth interrupted him.
“I daresay you are right about your father,” she said; “but as to Philippa, I don’t know; she has had some change this autumn. There was the visit to Dorriford, you know, which she enjoyed very much, and—”
But in his turn Charles interrupted, fortunately so, perhaps, for Mrs Raynsworth was beginning to feel very guilty.
“A week,” he said, “a week or ten days at most—what’s that? Oh, no, she needs much more thorough change than that sort of thing. She has grown nervous, mother, that is what I have noticed, for it is so unlike her. She changes colour for nothing and starts if one opens the door suddenly. No, I am sure I am right about them both, and this is what I want you to help me to manage. Father and Phil should go abroad together this winter for three or four months. They would enjoy it thoroughly. Phil has never been out of England, and father can take her over some of the old ground he knows so well. It would be new life to him. Phil is so intelligent, you see, and would enter into all that interested him,” and Charley’s commonplace greenish-grey eyes lighted up with eagerness till they looked almost beautiful. He was nearly breathless, as he stopped short in the path and stood facing his mother.
She could not but be infected to some extent by his enthusiasm, but Mrs Raynsworth was eminently practical.
“My dearest boy!” she exclaimed. “Yes, I agree with you; nothing could be more delightful for both your father and Philippa,” and as she named her younger daughter there flashed through her mind the special benefit to the girl of such a complete change of life and surroundings at the present time; “nothing,” she repeated, “could be better. But, Charley, you forget—the ways and means!—and your father’s work. We should never persuade him to leave it.”
“He need not do so; at least, I mean to say, it need not suffer,” said the young man. “I have gone into all that part of it already since I came, without my father’s finding it out. He can quite well leave his work at its present stage to me—he said so himself. And the time I would give it need be no more than I could give to him if he were here. I can quite fit it in with my own work. The only thing father must do is to defer starting on his new book for a few weeks, and all the better if he does so. He would gather some fresh material if he was in Italy, and—”