“Cissy Nunn told me you only said Ma’am.”
“Cissy Nunn had no manners,” said Grace. “I like titles; they are so pretty. Everybody that is beautiful, or delightful, or has genius should have some beautiful title. Princess!—that is what I should like to call her; but I suppose you can only do that when you are intimate—and I am afraid, with so many people as she must have to see, that’s not very likely,” the girl said regretfully.
Thus they went on talking the greatest nonsense in the world without suspecting it. The Yorkes were persons of importance at home. Whenever a great personage from England appeared there, he was received with all the resources of their simple and graceful, but by no means magnificent, hospitality. The distinguished visitors accepted all these little attentions cheerfully. They were the best to be had in the place, and they were characteristic of it, and amused the wandering peers and lions as much as if their hosts had been lions also, or peers. But it need not be said that the Colonial Secretary was very unlikely to invite the Yorkes to make his house their home, though that was how they had treated him; and that even the most amiable of princesses would not feel herself bound to invite, nor her august spouse even to recollect the name of the good colonial people who had been altogether at his service. Nay, we doubt much if the author would have felt himself bound to assemble a literary party for the admiration of the Canadian family. The simplicity of the girls considered all these natural returns of their hospitality not only as natural, but inevitable, though some doubts on the subject of the Princess did cross their minds. Still they could not help thinking an invitation was at least possible. These anticipations kept them amused, and made them forget the passage of time. The bland waiter came up to the door, and looked in more than once. Finally he entered, and asked respectfully if they would not like to have dinner served? Then they looked at each other blankly, relapsing all at once into alarm and gloom.
“Perhaps it will be better to have it put upon the table,” said Grace, faltering.
“I couldn’t eat a morsel,” said Milly energetically.
“Oh, hush!” said the elder sister, “most likely the people are angry having to wait so long.”
And this argument was too strong to be resisted. They were still a little afraid of making people angry, and loved to please everybody they were brought in contact with. Then came the soup, cold, which they tried to swallow; then a terrible soaked rag of fish. But the next moment Mr Yorke himself walked in. He told the girls hastily that he had been caught in the rain—that he had been paying a visit in a suburb, where cabs were not to be got easily, and that he was so wet and it was so late that he would go to bed at once and have something brought to him to his room. This was a climax to the discomfort of the evening. They sent away the joint notwithstanding the almost tears of the waiter. “Oh, what do we care for dinner!” the girls cried. They had been warned when they left home that, above all things, they were to see that their father did not catch cold.
“Mamma will think it is our fault,” said Milly, with quivering lips. Who had ever heard of papa going to bed unless he were very, very ill? Even Grace, though she had so much strength of mind, could scarcely keep from crying. “Oh, how I wish we had never left home!” she said. “Oh, if mamma were only here!” said Milly. Left to their own resources, they could think of nothing but a longing, useless appeal to the one authority. Mamma would know what should be done in such an emergency. She would understand at a glance the position of affairs, and whether he might safely be left alone, or what should be done for him. The girls knew that he was a very difficult patient, and that nobody but their mother could persuade him to attend to himself. It was a terrible problem for them so soon, before they had even awoke to the possibility of such an accident; for who ever thought of papa falling ill? it had been the thing against which no precaution had been taken. The girls had a little medicine chest full of Mrs Yorke’s domestic preservatives, and had received the minutest directions respecting their own health—but papa! “Take care your father does not catch cold,” she had said: but that was all. He had always been subject to bad colds. “But what could we have done?” Grace asked of herself unconsciously, hearing her mother’s warnings in her ears. After a while she ventured to go to his room to see if anything could be done. Mr Yorke had not gone to bed; he was sitting by a fire which smoked a little, in his dressing-gown, with a steaming glass of brandy-and-water by his side. He did not send away the girls, who floated into his room with a doubtful air, keeping close together like a pair of doves; but he looked up with restrained impatience from some letters he was reading. “What is it?” he said. Oh, not crossly—not at all crossly! they said afterwards; but keeping from being cross with an effort. The letters he was reading were old letters. Some lying on the table before him did not seem even to have been opened. He threw his handkerchief over them as the girls came in. “What is it?” Clearly he had found something which was of more interest to him than anything they could do or say.
“I hope you have had something to eat, papa,” said Grace.
“I don’t want anything to eat. I am taking this by way of precaution,” he said.