“Very easily. I often see you blarneying and wheedling that child of yours as only an Irishwoman can. I suppose you don’t say, ‘Ah, won’t you now, just to please mother?’ and you coaxed and talked me out of that photo of----” “Geoffrey, I declare, if you say another word, I’ll never be friends with you again!” exclaimed Alice, half rising. “Oh, all right, I’m dumb; but you _did_, you know; and I maintain that your Irishisms are as thick as the leaves in Vallambrosa. Why should the leaves be thicker _there_ than anywhere else?” said he, standing up and looking round. “Can anyone tell me? I thought not. Well, I’m off, not to study the leaves, but the _fruit_ in the garden.” * * * * * On Sunday evening, just as Alice was about to step into bed, and Mary was already sound asleep, the nurse came in to say, “Master Maurice is very bad with croup, and such a time to have it, too--not a drop of ipecacuanha in the house since Mary the housemaid broke the bottle last week.” To hurry on her dressing-gown and run up to the nursery took Alice less than two minutes. Maurice lay gasping in his cot. He was very ill indeed, as the nurse had said. He had never had such a bad attack before. His plaintive eyes, his poor little hot clasping hands, his struggles for breath, drove Alice nearly wild. The nurse said, “I can’t leave the child, ma’am. Will you go down and rouse Sir Reginald or Master Geoffrey, and send off for the doctor at once?” Alice flew down the passage, and had gone some distance before she suddenly remembered that she did not know which was her husband’s room, and he must be called up in preference to Geoffrey. She knew it was in the old wing, and that no one but himself slept there. Opening the swing-door into the dark carpetless corridor, she tried the first room. Silence. She opened the door--all was dark and still; in the next equal blackness and stillness; at the third, her patience exhausted, she dispensed with a knock, turned the handle, and all but fell down the steps into a lighted room, large, low, and old-fashioned, bare of curtains and all luxuries. A small iron bed, some obsolete chairs and tables, a huge bookcase, and a couple of cabinets containing birds’-nests and fossils, were ranged round the walls. Her husband was standing in the middle of the room with his coat off, winding up his watch. Shutting it with a sharp click, he viewed the apparition on the doorstep with unmeasured astonishment. His wife’s white frightened face told him that something was amiss, as she stood before him pale and distracted. “What is the matter?” he cried. “Robbers! or is the house on fire?” “Maurice is very ill. I want you to rouse up the men and send for the doctor.” “Very well,” he replied, resuming his coat and taking up his candle. “I’ll have a look at him first; perhaps he is not as bad as you imagine.” He followed Alice to the nursery; and when he saw the state of the case he looked very grave indeed.