"We must have a regular good tea," he said; "those cakes are meant to be eaten while they're quite fresh. And what's the other parcel, Chrissie?"
"Oh, it's two little ducky cushions," his sister replied, "quite little tiny ones of eider-down. They are to put under your elbows when you're sitting up, or at the back of your neck, or into any little odd corner where the big ones don't fit in. You know you've often wished for a little cushion, and when you go out into the garden or for a drive you'll need them still more, mamma says."
All the time she had been talking, Christine had been undoing her parcels, Mrs. Ross helping her to lay out their contents.
"Thank you so very much, mamma," said Ferdy, "everything's beautiful. Which way did you drive to Freston?"
"We went one way and came back the other," said Mrs. Ross,—"by the road that passes near Draymoor, you know. Dear me, even on a fine summer's day that place looks grim and wretched! And there seems always to be idle boys about, even early in the afternoon."
"Miss Lilly says there's often a lot that can't get work to do," said Ferdy. "It's this way—sometimes they're very, very busy, and sometimes there's not enough to do, and that's how they get into mischief, I suppose," he added, with the air of a small Solomon.
"It seems a pity that no one can take a real interest in the place," said his mother; "but here comes tea, Ferdy. I am sure we shall all be glad of it. Chrissie, you can arrange the cakes while I pour out tea."
They seemed a happy little party that afternoon—happier than Ferdy's mother, at least, would have believed it possible they could be, had she, three months or so before, foreseen the sad trouble that was to befall her darling.
"I wonder how soon I shall be able to go for a drive," said Ferdy. "Will you ask the big doctor the next time he comes, mamma? I should like to see Draymoor again. I've never forgotten that day I went there with papa. And now I understand about it so much better. Miss Lilly says it isn't that the people are very poor—they earn a lot of money when they are at work, but then they spend it all instead of spreading it over the times they haven't work. Isn't it a pity they can't be taught something else to do for the idle times, to keep them from quarrelling with each other and being unkind to their wives and children?"
Mrs. Ross looked at Ferdy with surprise and some misgiving. It was doubtless Miss Lilly who had talked to him about the Draymoor people. Was it quite wise of her to do so? Ferdy was so sensitive already, and his illness seemed to have made him even more "old-fashioned." To hear him talk as he was doing just now, one could easily have believed him twice his real age. But a second glance at his face made her feel easy again. He was speaking in a tone of quiet interest, but not in any nervous or excited way.