So it was not till Tuesday morning that Claudia’s letter was put into Charlotte’s hands at the breakfast-table.
“A letter for me,” she exclaimed, with some excitement and surprise; for Charlotte’s letters, except on the very rare occasions when she was away from home for a little, were few and far between. “I wonder what it is. I wish it could be anything to please poor Jerry,” she went on speaking half to herself.
For since they had brought him home, Jerry had been ill—confined to bed now for the best part of a week, and it seemed very melancholy without him, even in that busy household. It had not done him any harm to bring him straight home that first day; the harm was done already; the chill had given him a bad feverish cold, and though it was not anything very serious he was much weakened by it.
“He must get up his strength, or we shall be afraid to let him out again till the fine weather comes,” the doctor said; “and that would be a sad thing for a boy of his age.”
Then when he went down-stairs with Mrs Waldron to write a prescription for a tonic, he sat looking thoughtful and pre-occupied for a minute or two. Jerry’s mother was a little alarmed.
“You don’t think there is anything much the matter with him?” she said.
“No, oh no; he has rather lost ground in his general health the last few months. He needed a fresh start or a fillip, and unluckily he has, so to speak, had one the wrong way. But there is nothing to be uneasy about, only considering how wonderfully he has improved in the last few years, I should like to see him still stronger.”
“Yes,” Mrs Waldron agreed; “and in another year or so he will be getting into a higher class at school, and he will have to work harder, that will be trying for him.”
“Exactly,” said the doctor, who had known Jerry since he was a baby; “now’s the time for him to get up his strength. You couldn’t by any possibility, I suppose, manage to send him out of England, to some of the mild health places, for a winter? It would be the making of him.”
Mrs Waldron shook her head. She saw no chance whatever of such a thing and said so.