"The doctor says it’s worry," she explained, "and lack of nutrition. He says he must stay in bed a week, and we’ve got to feed him up and not let him worry again." Teddy’s face grew longer and longer. "Then we’ll have to have more money." "You poor Ted, yes; but then you’re making money on the side, aren’t you?" Reminding himself, as he did a hundred times a day, that Nicholson had had five years in which to get away with it, Teddy passed on upstairs to his father’s bedside. "It’s all right, dad," he tried to smile. "Don’t you worry. I’m here. I’ll take care of ma and the girls. You just make your mind easy and give yourself up to getting well." Jennie’s attendance at the studio was thus put out of the question for many days, and in the meantime she had a letter posted at Havana. Fearing that it would come and attract attention in the family, she watched the postman, getting it one morning before breakfast. Bob wrote: There is a love so big and strong and sure that separations mean nothing to it, because it fills the world. That’s my kind of love, Jennie darling. You can’t get out of it—I can’t get out of it—even if we would. At this very minute I’m sailing and sailing; but I’m not being carried farther away from you. The love in which you and I are now leading our lives is wider than the great big circle made by the horizon. Don’t forget that, dear. I’m always with you. Love doesn’t recognize distance. Love isn’t physical or geographical. It’s force, power, influence. I love you so much that I know I can keep you safe even though I’m on the other side of the world. I can’t fend troubles away from you, worse luck, but I can carry you through them. I know that till I come back you’ll be having a hard time; but my love will hang round you like an enchanted cloak, and nothing will really get at you. You’re always wearing that cloak, Jennie; you always walk with it about you. While Jennie was reading this, Edith Collingham, at breakfast at Marillo Park, was springing a question on her father. She sprang it at breakfast because it was the only time she was sure of seeing him alone. "Father, how far are children obliged to marry or not to marry in deference to their parents’ wishes, and how far have fathers and mothers the right to interfere?" Dauphin, who was on his haunches near his master’s knee, removed himself to a midway position between the two ends of the table, as if he felt that in the struggle he perceived to be coming he couldn’t throw his influence with either side. Through the open window Max could be seen in perpetual motion on the lawn, yet pausing every two minutes to look wistfully down the avenue in the hope of some loved approach.