Charlotte looked anxiously at Jerry when she came home from school that afternoon. He was lying asleep on his sofa, and her mother made a little sign not to disturb him as the girl opened the door.
“Is he no better to-day, mamma?” she whispered, as she sat down quietly beside her mother in the further corner of the room.
“Much as usual, I think,” Mrs Waldron replied, in the same tone. “Perhaps in himself he has been a little brighter. He was interested in what we were talking about.”
“Yes?” and Charlotte looked up inquiringly.
“Dr Lewis was here this morning. He examined Jerry thoroughly again, and still says the same thing. There is no actual disease, it is only weakness and want of tone that he speaks of. But those may be the beginning of anything! Charlotte, my dear, I have been feeling nearly desperate about Jerry.”
Then she went on to tell the girl all that the doctor had said—all that she had been thinking and resolving in her own mind.
She found full sympathy.
“Yes, mamma,” Charlotte agreed, “at all costs it must be done. But where should he go, and with whom, and how?”
“I don’t think it matters very specially where,” Mrs Waldron replied, “so long as it is a bright and sunny place. But how? Ah, I wish I knew! I am so ignorant of all those winter places—I don’t know which are the cheapest. I fancy they are all dear! Jerry has been writing to his friend, Miss Meredon, again. She wrote to him that she and her aunt are going abroad. I wish—I wonder if we could get any information from them.”
“Oh, no,” Charlotte interposed hastily; “don’t let us put ourselves under any more obligation to them. I don’t want to be horrid, mamma, but that girl seems to be always coming in my way. Even now that she has left school for a while, the next thing is we must hear of her going abroad for the winter like a princess, just when we’d give anything to be able to send Jerry.”