“Oh, yes,” cried Bee, her eyes full of pity, “for they can see what you have gone through, and how much you have been suffering,—if there was any need of making you more interesting to us.”
Charlie stroked down his little tufts of wool for some time without speaking, and then he said in a caressing tone unusual to him, “I want you to do me a favour, Bee.”
“Anything—anything, whatever you wish, Charlie.”
“There is just one thing I wish, and one person I want to see. Sit down and write a note—you need not do more than say where I am,” said Charlie, speaking quickly. “Say I am here, and have been very ill, but that the hope she’d come, and to hear that she had forgiven me, was like new life. Well! what is the meaning of your ‘anything, anything,’ if you break down at the first thing I ask you? Look here, Bee, if you wish me to live and get well you’ll do what I say.”
“Oh, Charlie, how can I?—how can I?—when you know what I feel—about——”
“What you feel—about? Who cares what you feel? You think perhaps it was you that did me all that good last night. That’s all conceit, like the nonsense in novels, where a woman near your bed when you’re ill makes all the difference. Girls,” said Charlie, “are puffed up with that folly and believe anything. You know I didn’t want you. It was what you told me about her that did me good. And your humbug, sitting there crying, ‘anything, anything!’ Well, here’s something! You need not write a regular letter, if you don’t like it. Put where I am—Charlie Kingsward very ill; will you come and see him? A telegram would do, and it would be quicker; send a telegram,” he cried.
“Oh, Charlie!”
“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.”