"It's a marvel to me how I can talk to her at all. What made me offer
to come with her? How much does she know about me and Hilda? Hilda may
have told her everything. If she's told her about her husband why
shouldn't she have told her about me? And here we are both pretending
that there's never been anything at all between me and Hilda!"
Then the train appeared, obscure round the curve, and bore down
formidable and dark upon them, growing at every instant in stature and
in noise until it deafened and seemed to fill the station; and the
platform was suddenly in an uproar.
And almost opposite Janet and Edwin, leaning forth high above them from
the door of a third-class carriage, the head and the shoulders of George
Cannon were displayed in the gaslight. He seemed to dominate the train
and the platform. At the windows on either side of him were adult
faces, excited by his excitement, of the people who had doubtless been
friendly to him during the journey. He distinguished Janet and Edwin
almost at once, and shouted, and then waved.
"Hello, young son of a gun!" Edwin greeted him, trying to turn the
handle of the door. But the door was locked, and it was necessary to
call a porter, who tarried.
"I _made_ mamma let me come!" George cried victoriously. "I told you I
should!" He was far too agitated to think of shaking hands, and seemed
to be in a state of fever. All his gestures were those of a proud,
hysterical conqueror, and like a conqueror he gazed down at Edwin and
Janet, who stood beneath him with upturned faces. He had absolutely
forgotten the existence of his acquaintances in the carriage. "Did you
know I've had the influenza? My temperature was up to 104 once--but it
didn't stay long," he added regretfully.
When the door was at length opened, he jumped headlong, and Edwin caught
him. He shook hands with Edwin and allowed Janet to kiss him.
"How hot you are!" Janet murmured.
The people in the compartment passed down his luggage, and after one of
them had shouted good-bye to him twice, he remembered them, as it were
by an effort, and replied, "Good-bye, good-bye," in a quick, impatient
tone.
It was not until his anxious and assiduous foster-parents had bestowed
him and his goods in the tranquillity of an empty compartment of the
Loop Line train that they began to appreciate the morbid unusualness of
his condition. His eyes glittered with extraordinary brilliance. He
talked incessantly, not listening to their answers. And his skin was
burning hot.
"Why, whatever's the matter with you, my dear?" asked Janet, alarmed.
"You're like an oven!"
"I'm thirsty," said George. "If I don't have something to drink soon, I
don't know what I shall do."
Janet looked at Edwin.
"There won't be time to get something at the refreshment room?"
They both felt heavily responsible.
"I might--" Edwin said irresolutely.
But just then the guard whistled.
"Never mind!" Janet comforted the child. "In twenty minutes we shall
be in the house... No! you must keep your overcoat buttoned."
"How long have you been like that, George?" Edwin asked. "You weren't
like that when you started, surely?"
"No," said George judicially. "It came on in the train."
After this, he appeared to go to sleep.
"He's certainly not well," Janet whispered.
Edwin shrugged his shoulders. "Don't you think he's grown?" he
observed.
"Oh yes!" said Janet. "It's astonishing, isn't it, how children shoot
up in a few weeks!"
They might have been parents exchanging notes, instead of celibates
playing at parenthood for a hobby.
"Mamma says I've grown an inch." George opened his eyes. "She says
it's about time I had! I dare say I shall be very tall. Are we nearly
there?" His high, curt, febrile tones were really somewhat alarming.
When the train threw them out into the sodden waste that surrounds
Bleakridge Station, George could scarcely stand. At any rate he showed
no wish to stand. His protectors took him strongly by either arm, and
thus bore him to Lane End House, with irregular unwilling assistance
from his own feet. A porter followed with the luggage. It was an
extremely distressing passage. Each protector in secret was imagining
for George some terrible fever, of swift onslaught and fatal effect. At
length they entered the garden, thanking their gods.
"He's not well," said Janet to her mother, who was fussily awaiting them
in the hall. Her voice showed apprehension, and she was not at all
convincing when she added: "But it's nothing serious. I shall put him
straight to bed and let him eat there."
Instantly George became the centre of the house. The women disappeared
with him, and Edwin had to recount the whole history of the arrival to
Osmond Orgreave in the drawing-room. This recital was interrupted by
Mrs Orgreave.
"Mr Edwin, Janet thinks if we sent for the doctor, just to be sure. As
Johnnie isn't in, would you mind--"
"Stirling, I suppose?" said Edwin.
Stirling was the young Scottish doctor who had recently come into the
town and taken it by storm.
When Edwin at last went home to a much-delayed meal, he was in a
position to tell Maggie that young George Cannon had thought fit to
catch influenza a second time in a couple of months. And Maggie,
without a clear word, contrived to indicate that it was what she would
have expected from a boy of George's violent temperament.