Part 43 (2/2)
”No wonder you've got a chill,” she said.
”I didn't get it then. I got it yesterday in the garden.”
She remembered. He had been wandering about the garden, after church, looking for snowdrops in the snow. Barbara had worn the snowdrops in the breast of her gown last night.
He nourished his resentment on that memory and on the thought that he had got his chill picking snowdrops for Barbara.
At tea-time he drank a little tea, but he couldn't eat anything. He felt sick and his head ached. At dinner-time, on f.a.n.n.y's advice, he went to bed and f.a.n.n.y took his temperature.
A hundred and one. He turned the thermometer in his hand, gazing earnestly at the slender silver thread. He was gratified to know that his temperature was a hundred and one and that f.a.n.n.y was frightened and had sent for the doctor. He had a queer, satisfied, exalted feeling, now that he was in for it. When Barbara came back she would know what he was in for and be frightened, too. He would have been still more gratified if he had known that without him dinner was a miserable affair. f.a.n.n.y showed that she was frightened, and her fear flattened down the high spirits of Ralph and Barbara and Horry, returned from their skating.
”You see, Barbara,” said Ralph, when they had left f.a.n.n.y and Horry with the doctor, ”we can't live without him.”
They listened at the smoke-room door for the sound of Dr. Ransome's departure, and Ralph waited while Barbara went back and brought him the verdict.
”It's flu, and a touch of congestion of the lungs.”
They looked at each other sorrowfully, so sorrowfully that they smiled.
”Yet we can smile,” he said.
”You know,” said Barbara, ”he got it standing in the snow, while Pyecraft photographed him.”
”It's the way,” Ralph said, ”he would get it.”
And Barbara laughed. But, all the same, she felt a distinct pang at her heart every time she went into her bedroom and saw, in its gla.s.s on her dressing-table, the bunch of snowdrops that Mr. Waddington had picked for her in the snow. They made a pattern on her mind; white cones hanging down; sharp green blades piercing; green stalks held in the crystal of the water.
2
”n.o.body but a fool,” said Horry, ”would have stood out in the snow to be photographed ... at his age.”
”Don't, Horry.”
Barbara was in the morning-room, stirring some black, sticky stuff in a saucepan over the fire. The black, sticky stuff was to go on Mr.
Waddington's chest. Horry looked on, standing beside her in an att.i.tude of impatience. A pair of boots with skates clipped on hung from his shoulders by their laces. He felt that his irritation was justifiable, for Barbara had refused to go out skating with him.
”Why 'don't'?” said Horry. ”It's obvious.”
”Very. But he's ill.”
”There can't be much the matter with him or the mater wouldn't look so chirpy.”
”She likes nursing him.”
”Well,” Horry said, ”_you_ can't nurse him.”
”No. But I can stir this stuff,” said Barbara.
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