"You do not care to hear about it?"
"I am glad that you have a house," said Dolly demurely. Sandie was lying on the turfy bank, in a convenient position for looking up into her eyes; and she found it not precisely an easy position for her.
"You do not take it as a matter of personal concern?"
"It is a house a long way off," said Dolly. "Just now we are here.''
"How much longer do you expect to be here?"
"That I do not know at all. Mother and I have tried and tried to get father to go home again,—and we cannot move him."
"I must try," said Mr. Shubrick.
"Oh, if you could!" said Dolly, clasping her hands unconsciously—"I don't know what I would give. He seems to mind you more than anybody."
"What keeps him here? Business?"
"I suppose it is partly business," said Dolly slowly, not knowing quite how to answer. And then darted into her heart with a pang of doubt and pain, the question: was not Mr. Shubrick entitled to know what kept her father in England, and the whole miserable truth of it? She had been so occupied and so happy these last days, she had never fairly faced the question before. It almost caught her breath away.