He came home only just in time for dinner, and found Armine enduring,
with a touching resignation learnt in Miss Parsons's school, the
sarcasm of Bobus for having omitted to prepare his studies. The boy
could neither eat nor entirely conceal the chills that were running
over him; and though he tried to silence his brother's objurgations
by bringing out his books afterwards, his cheeks burnt, he emitted
little grunting coughs, and at last his head went down on the
lexicon, and his breath came quick and short.
The Harvest Festival day was perforce kept by him in bed, blistered
and watched from hour to hour to arrest the autumn cold, which was
the one thing dreaded as imperilling him in the English winter which
he must face for the first time for four years.
And Miss Parsons, when impressively told, evidently thought it was
the family fashion to make a great fuss about him.
Alas! why are people so one-sided and absorbed in their own concerns
as never to guess what stumbling-blocks they raise in other people's
paths, nor how they make their good be evil spoken of?
Babie confided her feelings to Jock when he escorted her to Church in
the evening, and had detected a melancholy sound in her voice which
made him ask if she thought Armine's attack of the worst sort.
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