And so they were: Clement had indeed been at home in September, but Alda not for a year and three-quarters, nor Edgar since he first left it three years before. The absence of the two latter was not by their own choice; a doctor who had ordered Mrs. Thomas Underwood to spend the summer months, year after year, at Spa was partly the cause; and moreover, during the autumn and winter of 1856 Bexley had been a perfect field of epidemics. Measles and whooping-cough had run riot in the schools, and lingered in the streets and alleys of the potteries, fastening on many who thought themselves secured by former attacks; and there had been a good many deaths, in especial Clement's chief friend, Harry Lamb. Nobody, excepting the invalid mother, throughout the Underwood household, had escaped one or other disorder; and both fell to the lot of the four little ones, and likewise of Mr. Audley, who was infinitely disgusted at himself, and at the guarded childhood for which he thus paid the penalty pretty severely. When matters were at the worst, and Felix was laid up, and Wilmet found herself succumbing, she had written in desperation to Sister Constance, whose presence in the house had made the next three weeks a time of very pleasant recollections. Finally she had carried off Geraldine, Angela, and Bernard, to the convalescent rooms at St. Faith's, where their happiness had been such that the favourite sport of the little ones had ever since been the acting of Sisters of Mercy nursing sick dolls. The quarantine had been indefinitely prolonged for the protégés of Kensington Palace Gardens; for the three at school, though kept away till all infection was thought to be over, had perversely caught the maladies as soon as they came home for the summer holidays; and indeed the whole town and neighbouring villages were so full of contagion, that Mrs. Thomas Underwood had not far to seek for a plea for avoiding Centry.
All this time, from day to day, the poor mother had been growing more feeble, and it had been fully purposed that on Edgar's return at Christmas, on the completion of his studies at Louvaine, he and Alda should make some stay at home; but the brother and sister were both so useful and ornamental that their adopted home could not spare them until after a series of Christmas entertainments; and Clement had been in like manner detained until the festival services at St. Matthew's no longer required him. Indeed, when he had been at home in the autumn, he had been scarcely recognized.