“But you ought to eat. There is some mutton; it is quite hot still. May I ring and ask the waiter?”
“Don’t take any trouble about me. Don’t you think I am old enough to look after myself?”
Grace did not know what to do. Her mother, as she felt certain, and as Milly immediately suggested when they left the room, would have asked no questions; she would have had a tray brought in quite noiselessly without saying a word, and made him eat something. “Why didn’t you run, then, and ask for the tray if you knew that was the right thing?” Grace asked afterwards, aggrieved: but Milly had not the courage to take any initiative.
They stood for two or three moments more, looking at him with an anxiety that was altogether helpless.
“Is your cold in your head, papa? Is it in your chest? Have you got a cough? Do you feel any pain? Shall I bring you some lozenges?”
Poor Grace! she was cudgelling her brain to know what to do; but to ask questions was just the thing she was never to do. In the flurry and agitation of her feelings she forgot that.
“There is nothing the matter with me,” said Mr Yorke. “I have got a little cold; that is all; not to-night; I felt it when we landed. Go to bed. You must be tired too.”
“But, papa——” said Grace, gazing at him anxiously, helpless, with nothing to suggest, yet a scared consciousness that there was certainly something that she ought to do.
He had the air of a man interrupted in something much more interesting than their girlish talk. A little pucker of impatience gathered in his forehead; but he was too serious to smile, or to make a joke of it, as he often did. And there was a flush on his face, and he was very hoarse, looking exactly as he did when he caught one of his worst colds.
“Well,” he said almost harshly, “have you anything particular to say? If not, you see I am busy. I should prefer to be left alone.”