‘How is little Roger?’ said Molly, eagerly.

’Beginning with scarlet fever, I’m afraid.  It’s well you left when you did, Molly.  You’ve never had it.  We must stop up all intercourse with the Hall for a time.  If there’s one illness I dread, it is this.’

‘But you go and come back to us, papa.’

’Yes.  But I always take plenty of precautions.  However, no need to talk about risks that lie in the way of one’s duty.  It is unnecessary risks that we must avoid.’

‘Will he have it badly?’ asked Molly.

‘I can’t tell.  I shall do my best for the wee laddie.’

Whenever Mr. Gibson’s feelings were touched, he was apt to recur to the language of his youth.  Molly knew now that he was much interested in the case.

For some days there was imminent danger to the little boy; for some weeks there was a more chronic form of illness to contend with; but when the immediate danger was over and the warm daily interest was past, Molly began to realize that, from the strict quarantine her father evidently thought it necessary to establish between the two houses, she was not likely to see Roger again before his departure for Africa.  Oh! if she had but made more of the uncared-for days that she had passed with him at the Hall!  Worse than uncared for; days on which she had avoided him; refused to converse freely with him; given him pain by her change of manner; for she had read in his eyes, heard in his voice, that he had been perplexed and pained, and now her imagination dwelt on and exaggerated the expression of his tones and looks.

One evening after dinner, her father said,—­

’As the country-people say, I’ve done a stroke of work to-day.  Roger Hamley and I have laid our heads together, and we have made a plan by which Mrs. Osborne and her boy will leave the Hall.’

‘What did I say the other day, Molly?’ said Mrs. Gibson, interrupting, and giving Molly a look of extreme intelligence.

‘And go into lodgings at Jennings’ farm; not four hundred yards from the Park-field gate,’ continued Mr. Gibson.  ’The squire and his daughter-in-law have got to be much better friends over the little fellow’s sick-bed; and I think he sees now how impossible it would be for the mother to leave her child, and go and be happy in France, which has been the notion running in his head all this time.  To buy her off, in fact.  But that one night, when I was very uncertain whether I could bring him through, they took to crying together, and condoling with each other; and it was just like tearing down a curtain that had been between them; they have been rather friends than otherwise ever since.  Still Roger’—­(Molly’s cheeks grew warm and her eyes soft and bright; it was such a pleasure to hear his name)—­’and I both agree that his mother knows much better how to manage the boy than his grandfather does.  I suppose that was the one good thing she got from that hardhearted mistress of hers.  She certainly