“Give me the paper and pencil—I’m shaky, but I can do that much myself——”
“Charlie, I’ll do it rather than vex you; but I don’t know where to send it.”
“Oh, I can tell you that—Avondale, near the Parks, Oxford.”
“She is not there now—she is in London,” said Bee, in a low tone.
“In London?” Again the long, gaunt limbs came to the ground with a thump. “Bee, if you could get me a hansom perhaps I could go.”
The nurse at this moment came in noiselessly, and Charlie shrank before her. She put him back on the sofa with a swift movement. “If you go on like this I’ll take the young lady away,” she said.
“I’ll not go on—I’ll be as meek as Moses; but, nurse, tell her she mustn’t contradict a man in my state. She must do what I say.”
Nurse turned her back upon the patient, and made the usual grimaces; “Humour him,” her lips and eyebrows said.
“Charlie, papa knows the address, and Betty—and I ought, oh, I ought to let them know at once that you are here.”
“Betty!” he said, with a grimace, “what does that little thing know?”