"Oh, mother! the nasty kind?"
"Certainly. Boots, if you'll move aside—"
"Let Boots give it to me!" exclaimed the child tragically. "It will do no good; I'm not getting better; but if I must take it, let Boots hold me—and the spoon!"
She sat straight up in bed with a superb gesture which would have done credit to that classical gentleman who heroically swallowed the hemlock cocktail. Some of the dose bespattered Boots, and when the deed was done the child fell back and buried her head on his breast, incidentally leaving medicinal traces on his collar.
Half an hour later she was asleep, holding fast to Boots's sleeve, and that young gentleman sat in a chair beside her, discussing with her pretty mother the plans made for Gladys and Gerald on their expected arrival.
Eileen, pale and heavy-lidded, looked in on her way to some afternoon affair, nodding unsmiling at Boots.
"Have you been rifling the pantry, too?" he whispered. "You lack your usual chromatic symphony."
"No, Boots; I'm just tired. If I wasn't physically afraid of Drina, I'd get you to run off with me—anywhere. . . . What is that letter, Nina? For me?"
"It's for Phil. Boots brought it around. Leave it on the library table, dear, when you go down."
Eileen took the letter and turned away. A few moments later as she laid it on the library table, her eyes involuntarily noted the superscription written in the long, angular, fashionable writing of a woman.