"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. "I suppose," Horry said, "you'd think me an awful brute if I went?" "I wish you _would_ go. You're a much more awful brute standing there saying things about him and getting in my way." "All right. I'll get out of it. That's jolly easy." And he went. But he felt sick and sore. He had tried to persuade himself that his father wasn't ill because he couldn't bear to think how ill he was; it interfered with his enjoyment of his skating. "If," he said to himself, "if he'd only put it off till the ice gave. But it was just like him to choose a hard frost." His anger gave him relief from the sickening anxiety he felt when he thought of his father and his father's temperature. It had gone down, but not to normal. Mr. Waddington lay in his bed in Fanny's room. Barbara, standing at the open door with her saucepan, caught a sight of him. He was propped up by his pillows. On his shoulders, over one of those striped pyjama suits that Barbara had once ordered from the Stores, he wore, like a shawl, a woolly, fawn-coloured motor-scarf of Fanny's. His arms were laid before him on the counterpane in a gesture of complete surrender to his illness. Fanny was always tucking them away under the blankets, but if anybody came in he would have them so. He was sitting up, waiting in an adorable patience for something to be done for him. His face had the calm, happy look of expectation utterly appeased and resigned. It was that look that frightened Barbara; it made her think that Mr. Waddington was going to die. Supposing his congestion turned to pneumonia? There was so much of him to be ill, and those big men always did die when they got pneumonia.