"POOR LITTLE LAD."
Geoffrey could not fail to acknowledge to himself that after all, Nurse
had been wise in putting Dodie into a frock with high neck and long
sleeves, for the winter was unusually severe.
Snow lay for several days some inches thick in the garden, and though
the boys enjoyed the snowballing well enough, and were able to keep
themselves thoroughly warm, little Dodie seemed to feel the cold very
acutely, and often came in from her daily walk crying from the pain of
freezing fingers.
In fact, the child did not seem herself, and Nurse began to grow uneasy
about her, particularly as in seven days' time, Major Fortescue was
expected and she was naturally anxious that all the children should be
looking their best on his arrival.
In Geoffrey's eyes, Dodie seemed to be growing thinner and smaller
altogether, and a terrible fear seized him lest she was going to be
ill, and would be so when his Father arrived.
As the days past, he gave up snowballing, and spent his time in the
nursery with Dodie, who was not allowed out.
"I think the cold has struck her," said Nurse, as one day she
altogether refused to eat her dinner. "I've a mind to send for Dr.
Booth, the powders I've been giving her don't seem to be what she
wants."
Geoffrey laid down his knife and fork, feeling a sudden disinclination
for the mutton and dumplings before him.
"Do you think Dodie is going to be ill?" he asked anxiously.
"I hope not, my dear, but it ain't like her to turn away from her
food, and she has a nasty little cough that don't get better. Anyways
I'll ask Dr. Booth to look in, there can't be no harm in that. There,
there my darling," she added, taking Dodie on to her knee, "don't cry,
there's a pet."
Nurse looked down at Dodie's little face which was lying on her arm.
"I don't like the look of her," she murmured more to herself than
to anyone else, "her eyes are too bright to be natural, and she's
restless, poor little dear." Then louder she added, "Geoff, you might
run down when you've finished your dinner and ask the doctor to be so
good as to look in. You'd catch him before he starts out on his rounds
if you're quick."
[Illustration: "Dr. Booth," he said,—looking up into the Doctor's
face—"will Dodie be well by the time Father comes home?"]
Geoffrey, who had listened with a beating heart to all Nurse had said,
sprang up at once, and not heeding Nurse's injunction to finish his
dinner first, ran off at once for the Doctor, and returned again in an
incredibly short time.
To his excited imagination, the few minutes that elapsed between
leaving the message at the doctor's door and his arrival seemed hours,
and then at last his ring was heard, and a minute after, he stood
looking at Dodie, who still lay in nurse's arms.
Geoff did not move his eyes from his face, till Nurse suddenly looking
up and becoming conscious of the three little listeners who stood
around, ordered them all peremptorily out of the room. Geoffrey,
however, waylaid the Doctor as he left.
"Dr. Booth," he said, standing with his hands thrust deeply in his
pockets, and looking earnestly up into the Doctor's face as he put on
his coat in the hall, "will Dodie be well by the time Father comes
home?"
The Doctor shook his head somewhat ominously.
"That I can't tell you, my boy," he answered, as he buttoned up his
coat and smoothed his collar, "with care I hope your little sister will
get well before very long—but it will require care—and I can't say
exactly when she will be herself again."
"Is she going to be very ill?" asked Geoff.
The doctor turned away somewhat hurriedly from the anxious face looking
up into his, and fidgeted a little nervously with his hat before
putting it on. Then clearing his throat, he looked round again and
patted the boy on the head saying, kindly:
"Care and physic do wonderful things, my boy—for all I know, your
little sister will be having a game of snowballing with you this day
week."
"I do hope she'll be well by the time Father comes," said Geoff with a
sigh.
"Oh well—who knows!" said Dr. Booth jovially—and ramming his hat on
his head, he nodded to Geoff, and in a minute more was driving away
from the house, but not away from the remembrance of those anxious eyes
that had been raised so beseechingly to him,—which remembrance made him
shake his head, murmuring "poor little lad."
When Geoff went up to the nursery, he saw Nurse had been crying, but
when he asked what the Doctor really thought of Dodie, she told him she
had no time to talk and that he had better go down to the other boys
in the schoolroom as Dodie had to go straight to bed, and mustn't be
disturbed by any noise.
Geoffrey did as he was bid, but with a heavy heart, feeling quite
sure that Nurse's tears meant that Dodie was very ill. He could not
play with Forbes and Jack, or even read, but sat by the fire, looking
silently at the red coals, for an hour or more.
It was the greatest relief when Nurse at last came down and told him
he might go upstairs and watch by Dodie's crib while she had her tea,
and that was the beginning of a continual watching on the boy's part.
Nurse finding how gentle and tender he was, and how noiselessly he
could move about when he liked, did not object to his spending many
hours by Dodie's crib, and indeed, in her great anxiety, she began
to be thankful for the boy's presence. For the Doctor's report of
Dodie had been serious. The child had caught a chill, and before many
hours were over, Bronchitis declared itself, and notwithstanding the
care and physic from which the doctor had hoped such great things, on
Christmas Eve little Dodie went to Heaven with a smile on her face, and
stretching out her little hands as if someone had come to fetch her.
"I think Mother must have come for her," said Geoffrey in a low voice,
as they stood round the schoolroom fire talking about it all.
"Yes," said Jack between his sobs, "Perhaps she was sent to fetch her,
lest she should be afraid of all the new people in Heaven. Even kind
Abraham might frighten her a little, she was always afraid of people
with beards—but she wouldn't mind them a bit, if Mother fetched her."
Geoffrey nodded quietly. He did not cry. He had not shed a tear.
When once little Dodie had breathed her last, all sense of his own loss
vanished in the overwhelming thought of what his Father's sorrow would
be, when he found Dodie had gone.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]