“Did you know them—the sister and the boy?” asked Charlotte.
“Yes,” said Mr Waldron, and he sighed.
“If you had been grown-up then, couldn’t you have helped them now that you’re such a clever lawyer?” asked Jerry.
“Perhaps I might have been able to do something.”
“Only ‘perhaps’!” said Jerry reproachfully. “Papa, I think the law is horribly unjust. I hate it. I don’t want to be a lawyer. Fancy those poor things! And the poor, poor ghost.”
“Jerry’s got the ghost on the brain,” said Ted, teasingly.
“Mamma,” said Jerry plaintively, “do you hear Ted? Should he mock like that when papa’s been telling us the story seriously?”
“He’s only in fun; he didn’t mean to vex you, Jerry,” said Arthur, and Mrs Waldron looked at the boy somewhat anxiously. She did not like his half querulous tone. It reminded her of the time when he was suffering and feeble, and unable to bear ordinary nursery life. “Jerry can’t be well,” she said to herself; and she said it aloud to her husband when they were left alone.
“Do you think I should not have told that old story in his hearing?” he asked. “He is not usually nervous or excitable. I could not get out of telling it without seeming to make some mystery.”
“And you think it better not to tell them the whole?” asked his wife.