“I doubt if he would have stood it a few weeks hence,” said he. “He was evidently losing instead of gaining strength every day in England. But you will see a great change in a little while.”
And in the mean time Jerry’s illness had one good effect. It drew the two girls together as nothing else could have done, and made the Waldrons feel more quickly and thoroughly at home with Lady Mildred than would otherwise have been the case. For her real kindness of heart came to the front at such times, and all her stiffness and “frighteningness” vanished.
One day—one lovely day, when it was difficult to believe it was only February, and that up there in the north in poor, grey old England, the rain and the fogs, or the snow, perhaps, were having it all their own way—a little group was enjoying the sunshine on one of the pleasant terrace walks above the sea. There was Jerry in an invalid-chair still, but looking as if he would soon be independent of anything of the kind, and beside him his two constant girl-attendants. Suddenly one of them started forward.
“Claudia,” she said, “I see papa; he is coming our way. Would you mind my running to meet him? I do so want to talk to him a little. He will so soon be going now, and I have scarcely seen him alone for so many days.”
“Of course,” Claudia replied. “Jerry and I will be perfectly happy. Don’t hurry, Charlotte.”
And in another minute Charlotte was beside her father, her two hands clasped on his arm.
“Well, my gipsy?” he said.
“Oh, papa, I have so much to say to you, and you are going so soon,” she replied.
“And I have been so busy since Jerry got better that my little girl is beginning to think I am forgetting her—is that your new trouble? Remember, I never agreed with you in the old days, when it seemed to you that if a good many ‘ifs’ were realised, there would be no such thing as a trouble left.”
“Papa,” said Charlotte reproachfully; “I’m not making troubles. I’m never going to do so—it would be too ungrateful. I suppose, as you say so, they must come some time or other, but just now, with Jerry better and all, it’s difficult to think of them. You haven’t any, have you, dear papa?”