F. E."
Cecil's letter went off with his brother's in early morning; but it
was such a day as only mails and postmen encounter. Mountains, pine-
woods, nay, even the opposite houses, were blotted out by sheets of
driving rain, and it was impossible to think of bringing Jock down!
Dr. Medlicott heard and saw with dismay. What would the mother say
to him-—nay, what ought he to have done? He could hardly expect her
not to reproach him, and he fairly dreaded meeting her eyes when they
turned from the streaming window.
But all she said was, "We did not reckon on this."
"If I had--" began the doctor.
"Please don't vex yourself," said she; "you could not have done
otherwise, and perhaps the move would have hurt him more than staying
there. You have been so very kind. See what you have done here!"
For Armine, after some hours that had been very distressing, had sunk
into a calm sleep, and there was a far less oppressed look on his wan
little face.
The doctor would have had her take some rest, but she shook her head.
The only means of allaying the gnawing anxiety for Jock, and the
despairing fancies about his suffering and Johnny's helplessness, was
the attending constantly to Armine.
"Anyway, I will see him to-day," said Dr. Medlicott, impelled far
more by the patient silence with which she sat, one hand against her
beating heart, than he would have been by any entreaty.
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