Lord Osborne was a good deal perturbed at the ne with which Dora met him at Grote, and it was an affair that demanded careful handling to induce him not to go back at once to town and see her.
“Bless me! Maria not well enough to come down, and you expect me to take my Sunday off, and eat my dinner as if my old lady was a-seated opposite me?” he asked. “Not I, my dear; Maria’s and my place is together, wherever that place may be.”
“But you can’t go against her wish, Dad,” said Dora. “And what’s to become of me if you do? I’ve been sent down on purpose to play at being her. You’ve got to have a glass of milk by your bed, and a couple of biscuits. Oh, I know all about it!”
“To think of your knowing that!” he said, rather struck by this detail.
“Yes, but only this morning did I know it,” said Dora. “I sat with her a long time, and all she could think about was that you should be comfortable down here.”
“Well, it goes against the grain not to be with her,” said he. “But, as you say, there’s no cause to be alarmed yet. And Sir Henry’s going to see her this afternoon?”
“Yes, and telegraph to me afterward. Dad, if you upset all our beautiful arrangements, neither she nor I will ever speak to you again. Oh! do be good.”
“But it won’t be like home not to have Lady O. here,” said he.
“She knows that; but Claude and I have to make as good an imitation as we can. And you’ll put me in a dreadful hole if you go back to town. She will say I have made no hand of looking after you at all. I shall be in disgrace, as well as you.”
“Well, God bless you, my dear!” said he, “and thank you for being so good to us. Here I’ll stop, if it’s the missus’s wish. No, I don’t fancy any pudding to-day, thank you.”
“Dad, not one morsel do I eat unless you have some!” she said. “And I’m dreadfully hungry.”
“Eh! you’ve got a managing wife, Claude,” he said. “She twists us all round her little finger.”
The expected telegram arrived in the course of the evening, and though it contained nothing definite, Lord Osborne was able to interpret it in the most optimistic manner.
“Well, Sir Henry tells you that Mrs. O.’s in no pain, and that he’s going to see her again to-morrow,” he said. “Why, I call that good news, and it relieves my mind, my dear. Bless her! she’ll get a good night’s rest, I hope now, and feel a different creature in the morning. There’s nothing else occurs to you, my dear? Surely he would have said if he had found anything really wrong?”