“That means papa is better,” said Milly. “I knew it from the first moment, as soon as I saw the doctor’s kind face.”
He turned his kind face away from them with a forced smile. He could not bear to meet their anxious eyes.
“But we have no friends--not to call friends,” said Grace, who was not quite so sure as Milly, and yet was so glad to take Milly’s opinion for this once. “We have letters to quantities of people, and some of them we have seen at home. There is Lord Conway,” she said with a little hesitation--“he once stayed at our house. It is a long time ago, but we thought--oh, we did not want him to ask us, especially since papa has been ill. It would be dreadful to have a long illness in a stranger’s house.”
“Lord Conway!” Dr Brewer said, bewildered.
“But we don’t know him, not as you know your friends,” Grace made haste to add; “we don’t know any one in that way. They are all people who have been in Canada, or the friends of people who have been in Canada.”
The doctor shook his head. “Do you mean that you know nobody, my poor dear children? You have no _friends_--people who really are acquainted with you, who would take a little trouble for you, whom you could have recourse to----” Here he stopped, confused, feeling Grace’s eye upon him. “I thought you might have--relations even, on this side of the water,” he said.
“Whom we could have recourse to!” said Grace--“oh, doctor, tell us, tell us what you mean! Why should we want to have recourse to any one? That means more than ordinary words----”
“He means--to show us some civility--to show us England--now that papa is going to get better,” said Milly, throwing back her head with a pretty movement of pleasure. But Dr Brewer did not raise his eyes. He could not face them, the one so anxious to divine his meaning, the other happy in her mistake. Milly was talkative and effusive in her joy. “Now we ought to telegraph to mamma,” she cried. “She will have got the first letter saying how ill papa was. It will be delightful to relieve her mind all in a moment--to tell her he is getting well, almost as soon as she knew that he was ill. We must telegraph to-morrow.”
Dr Brewer still did not meet Grace’s anxious gaze, which would have read his face in a moment. “You are very young,” he said, “to have had such a--responsibility upon you. You have been very brave hitherto, and you will not break down now. I am afraid, indeed, that I shall have to telegraph to your mother--very soon now.”