“No,” said the father; “you must stay behind and look after Little Mother. She would be so lonely without you.”
The children, with the volatility of their age, accepted this explanation, and presently once more turned to their father with a demand for a story.
“No!” he said; “it is your turn to tell me a story. I am tired to-day. You, Pervenche, must say for me ‘The Three Kings,’ and you, Golla, must say ‘The White Bird.’ I haven’t heard you say them for quite a long time. And each standing up in turn, like a corporal saluting his captain, Pervenche and Golla recited their little pieces; and as they recited, the tears rolled down their father’s cheeks.
“You are crying, daddy,” suddenly exclaimed the little one. “What are you crying for?”
The poet was crying because, among all the many human experiences he had missed, he had missed his children too.
Their nurse near at hand rescued him from the dilemma. “Daddy is tired,” she said; “bid him good-bye....”
And, wonderingly, the little creatures obeyed; but the tiny Golla, already a sturdy sceptic, kept asking, when they were once more in the nursery, “I wonder why daddy cried!”
When his little girls had gone, Wasteneys turned to his lawyer.
“What time is high tide to-day?”
He asked the question wearily, almost querulously; for, after all, he was seriously dying.