"Wonders--I asked them. Mr. Betterman's sitting right up."
"Really improving----?" Then her mystification spread. "'Them,' you
say?"
"Why his nurse, as I at least suppose her," said Davey, "is with
him--apparently to give you the expert opinion."
"Of the fiend's recuperating?" Cissy cried with a wail. And then before
her friend's bewilderment, "How dreadfully horrid!" she added.
"Whose nurse, please?" Rosanna asked of Davey.
"Why, hasn't he got a nurse?" Davey himself, as always, but desired
lucidity. "She's doing her duty by him all the same!"
On which Cissy's young wit at once apprehended. "It's one of Mr.
Betterman's taking a joy-ride in honour of his recovery! Did you ever
hear anything so cool?"
She had appealed to her friends alike, but Rosanna, under the force of
her suggestion, was already in advance. "Then father himself must be
ill!" Miss Gaw had declared, moving rapidly to the quarter in which he
so incongruously waited and leaving Davey to point a rapid moral for
Cissy's benefit while this couple followed.
"If he _is_ so upset that he hasn't been trusted alone I'll be hanged if
I don't just see it!"
But the marvel was the way in which after an instant Cissy saw it too.
"You mean because he can't stand Mr. Betterman's perhaps not dying?"
"Yes, dear ingenuous child--he has wanted so to see him out."
"Well then, isn't it what we're all wanting?"
"Most undoubtedly, pure pearl of penetration!" Davey returned as they
went. "His pick-up _will_ be a sell," he ruefully added; "even though it
mayn't quite kill anyone of us but Mr. Gaw!"