"Of course it is. You didn't suppose you were going as cabin-boy, did you?" said Mr. Marton rather crossly, though I don't think his being a little cross was to be wondered at. Poor Léonie looked very snubbed.
"I was only wondering," she said meekly, "if I could have stayed behind with the poor children till——"
"Impossible," said Mr. Marton; "lose your passage for a day or two's delay in their father's fetching them. If I thought it was more than that I would send them back to England," he added, turning to his wife.
"And poor Mrs. Lacy so ill! Oh no, that would never do," she said.
"And there's much more involved than our passages," he went on. "It's as much as my appointment is worth to miss this mail. It's just this—Captain Bertram is either here, or has been detained at Marseilles. If he's still there, we can look him up when we get there to-morrow; if he's in Paris, and has made some stupid mistake, we must get his address at Marseilles, he's sure to have left it at the hotel there for letters following him, and telegraph back to him here. I never did know anything so senseless as Susan Lacy's not making him give a Paris address," he added.
"He was only to arrive here yesterday or the day before," said Mrs. Marton.
"But the friends who were to have a nurse ready for the children? We should have had some address."
"Yes," said Mrs. Marton self-reproachfully. "I wish I had thought of it. But Susan was so sure all would be right. And certainly, in case of anything preventing Captain Bertram's coming, it was only natural to suppose he would have telegraphed, or sent some one else, or done something."
"Well—all things considered," said Mr. Marton, "it seems to me the best thing to do is to leave the children here, even if we had a choice, which I must say I don't see! For I don't know how I could send them back to England, nor what their friends there might find to say if I did—nor can we——"
"Take them on to Marseilles with us?" interrupted Mrs. Marton. "Oh, Phillip, would not that be better?"