The mother said something cheerful about a live mummy, but the two poor boys gazed at one another with sad, earnest, wistful eyes, and wrung one another's hands.
"Don't forget," gasped Armine, labouring for breath.
"All right, Armie; good-bye. I'm coming to morrow," with a choking, quivering attempt at bravery.
"Yes, to-morrow," said poor Mother Carey, bending over him. "My boy--my poor good boy, if I could but cut myself in two! I can't tell you how thankful I am to you for being so good about it. That dear good Johnny will do all he can, and it is only till tomorrow. You'll sleep most of the time."
"All right, mother," was again all that Jock could manage to utter, and the kisses that followed seemed to him the most precious he had known. He hid his face again, bearing his trouble the better because the lull of violent pain quelled by opiates, so that his senses were all as in a dream bound up. When he looked up again at the clink of glass, it was Cecil whom he saw measuring off his draught.
"Yes, Medlicott said I might stay till four, and give the Monk a chance of a sleep. That fellow can always snooze away off hand, and he is as sound as a top in the next room; but I was to give you this at two."
"I should think so. We've practice enough in the family to know how to measure off a dose by this time."
"How is it you are out here still? This is Thursday, isn't it? We meant to have been half way home, to be in time for the matches."
"I'm not going back this half, worse luck. They were mortally afraid these measles would make me get tender in the chest, like all the rest of us, so I've got nothing to do but be dragged about with Fordham after churches and picture galleries and mountains," said Cecil, in a tone of infinite disgust. "I declare it made me half mad to look at the Lake of Lucerne, and recollect that we might have been in the eight."
In this contemplation Cecil was silent, only fondling Chico, until Jock, instead of falling asleep again, said, "Evelyn, what does your doctor really think of the little chap?"
Cecil screwed up his face as if he had rather not be asked.
"Never you think about it," he said. "Doctors always croak. He'll be all right again soon."
"If I was sure," sighed Jock; "but you know he has always been such a religious little beggar. It's a horrid bad sign."