"I am Douglas," said the elder girl, rising and giving her hand graciously to the young man whose blue eyes showed no gleam of humour now and whose long upper lip was pulled down so far and so grimly that his perfect teeth could not do their part towards taking from the rugged homeliness of his face. "This is Helen, this Nan, and this Lucy."
The girls shook hands with him, all but Helen. She bowed, but as she bowed backwards, as it were, that is, jerked her chin up rather than down, it did not pass for courtesy.
"Well, yes,--I've got to talk to you girls like a Dutch uncle and I might just as well get down to it."
"I have an engagement," said Helen icily, consulting her tiny wrist watch, "so I will be excused."
"Well, then I think you will choose to keep it a little later. I have one, too, but am going to spare a few minutes to talk about your father, and I think it best for all of you to be present."
Douglas drew Helen down beside her. The girl was trembling just like a young horse who has felt the first spur. Robert Carter had always said that Helen was the best child in the world just so long as she had her own way. Fortunately her own way was not a very wrong way as a rule, but if there were a clash of wills, good-by to the will that was not hers.
Who was this bushy-eyebrowed young Caliban who came there ordering her about? She would show him! But in the meantime Douglas had an arm around her and Caliban was talking.
"Your father is a very ill man and as his physician I feel compelled to have a very serious conversation with the family."
"Will he die?" whispered Lucy, all pertness gone from her young face.
"No, my dear, he will not die; but he may do worse than die unless he can be allowed to take the rest that he should have been taking for years."
"What could be worse than death?" sobbed Nan.
"Uselessness! Chronic nervous prostration! His nerves have lost their elasticity and nothing will cure him but a long rest, absolutely free from care. Worries of all kinds, business, financial, family, every kind, must be kept from him. As I told your mother yesterday, a sea voyage would be the best thing for him, a long, lazy trip. When one gets on the water out of sight of land he kind of loses his identity in the immensity of Creation. That is what I want your father to do--lose his identity. Your mother must go with him to nurse him--he won't need much nursing, fortunately. And now you girls have got to decide among yourselves what is best to do. I know your financial affairs are none of my business----"