'Oh, nothing! nothing! I was only going to say, in case—in case she—she had a relapse.'
'And why should she have a relapse?' inquires Margaret sharply, in an alarmed and angry voice, turning round upon her companion.
'Why indeed!' replies the other, looking aside, and laughing rather confusedly. 'And at all events, you have Dr. Acton. He is so nice and attentive, and yet does not go on paying his visits long after there is any need for them, just to run up a bill as so many of them do.'
She is interrupted in her eulogium of the parish doctor by the appearance on the scene—both of them running at the top of their speed, as if they more than suspected pursuers behind them—of Lily and Franky Harborough. They, too, being on the wing home to-morrow, have come to bid their friend, Miss Lambton, good-bye; a ceremony which they entirely disdain to go through either in the churchyard or in the road, or indeed anywhere but under her own roof.
'Well, then, if you come you must be very quiet; you must make no noise,' she has said warningly.
She repeats the caution when they have reached the hall of the Red House, upon the settle of which there is no Prue lying; for though she is so much better—oh, so much—she has not yet been moved downstairs from the dressing-room.
'You must be very quiet,' Peggy repeats; 'you must remember that Prue is ill!'
Franky has climbed upon her knee, and is playing with the clasp of her Norwegian belt. He pauses from his occupation to ask her gravely, and in a rather awed voice, 'Is she very ill? Is she going to die?'
'God forbid!' cries Peggy, starting as if she had been stabbed. What! are they all agreed to run their knives in their different ways into her? 'My darling, do not say such dreadful things!'
'People do not die because they are ill,' remarks Lily, rather contemptuously; 'you did not die!'