"
"I promised, mother. Don't!" And no persuasions could draw anything
from him but tears. Indeed he was so feverish and in so much pain
that she called in Dr. Leslie before the evening was over, and
rheumatic fever was barely staved off by the most anxious vigilance
for the next day or two. It was further decreed that he must be
carefully tended all the winter, and must not go to school again till
he had quite got over the shock, since he was of a delicate frame
that would not bear to be trifled with.
The boy gave a long sigh of content when he heard that he was not to
return to school at present; but it did not induce him to utter a
word on the cause of the wetting, either to his mother or to Mr.
Ogilvie, who came up in much distress, and examined him as soon as he
was well enough to bear it. Nor would any of his schoolfellows tell.
Jock said he had had an imposition, and was kept in school when "it"
happened; John said "he had nothing to do with it;" and Rob and Joe
opposed surly negatives to all questions on the subject, Rob adding
that Armine was a disgusting little idiot, an expression for which
his father took him severely to task.
However there were those in Kenminster who never failed to know all
about everything, and the first afternoon after Armine's disaster
that Caroline came to Kencroft she was received with such sympathetic
kindness that her prophetic soul misgave her, and she dreaded hearing
either that she was letting herself be cheated by some tradesman, or
that she was to lose her pupils.
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