“Where what is? Trust me, Rob!” I said. “Is it Alf Reeder’s race-horse, Prince Charley?”
He started and his face turned pale. At that moment Uncle Horace opened the door. Rob had not heeded the nurse, who busied herself about the room, but at sight of his father the blood rushed in a flood to his face and his sensitive lips quivered as from a blow.
“I think you are staying too long, Bathsheba,” said Uncle Horace anxiously. The boy in whom he inspired such fear was the very pulse of his heart. “I don’t think he had better see any one, he is so easily agitated.”
The boy, indeed, shook now in all his slender frame as with a nervous chill, but he clung to my hand although his eyes were fixed on mine with a startled expression.
“It will be quite safe for me to know, Rob,” I whispered. But he shut his lips tightly and shook his head.
“I really think you had better go, Bathsheba,” said Uncle Horace insistently.
“You tell Dave I want him right away!” called Rob, as Uncle Horace opened the door for me. “Bathsheba, Bathsheba!” he called with what I thought was relenting in his tone. If I could go back I should be in full possession of the secret, and it would be a relief rather than a harm to tell me. But Uncle Horace firmly shut the door, and there was really no one in our family with courage enough to open a door that Uncle Horace had shut.
When I got outside of the house I heard Rob’s voice raised shrilly, insistently. He evidently wished for something and his father was objecting. Finally, as I lingered the nurse opened the window a little wider than it had been open before.
“Bathsheba! Bathsheba!” cried Rob. “It is—what you said! Tell Dave to go and get him—get him quick or I shall die!”
The boy was certainly desperate, for his father must have been within hearing. Alf Reeder’s race-horse, Prince Charley! Little by little the secret pieced itself together, like patchwork, in my brain.