Then he started with a quick “Hello!” and stood staring up at the steps from the terrace above, where Rose Adding was staying himself weakly by a clutch of Kenby on one side and March on the other.

His mother looked round and caught herself up from where she sat and ran toward him.  “Oh, Rose!”

“It’s nothing, mother,” he called to her, and as she dropped on her knees before him he sank limply against her.  “It was like what I had in Carlsbad; that’s all.  Don’t worry about me, please!”

“I’m not worrying, Rose,” she said with courage of the same texture as his own.  “You’ve been walking too much.  You must go back in the carriage with us.  Can’t you have it come here?” she asked Kenby.

“There’s no road, Mrs. Adding.  But if Rose would let me carry him—­”

“I can walk,” the boy protested, trying to lift himself from her neck.

“No, no! you mustn’t.”  She drew away and let him fall into the arms that Kenby put round him.  He raised the frail burden lightly to his shoulder, and moved strongly away, followed by the eyes of the spectators who had gathered about the little group, but who dispersed now, and went back to their devotions.

March hurried after Kenby with Mrs. Adding, whom he told he had just missed Rose and was looking about for him, when Kenby came with her message for them.  They made sure that he was nowhere about the church, and then started together down the terraces.  At the second or third station below they found the boy clinging to the barrier that protected the bass-relief from the zeal of the devotees.  He looked white and sick, though he insisted that he was well, and when he turned to come away with them he reeled and would have fallen if Kenby had not caught him.  Kenby wanted to carry him, but Rose would not let him, and had made his way down between them.

“Yea, he has such a spirit,” she said, “and I’ve no doubt he’s suffering now more from Mr. Kenby’s kindness than from his own sickness he had one of these giddy turns in Carlsbad, though, and I shall certainly have a doctor to see him.”

“I think I should, Mrs. Adding,” said March, not too gravely, for it seemed to him that it was not quite his business to alarm her further, if she was herself taking the affair with that seriousness.  He questioned whether she was taking it quite seriously enough, when she turned with a laugh, and called to General Triscoe, who was limping down the steps of the last terrace behind them: 

“Oh, poor General Triscoe!  I thought you had gone on ahead.”

General Triscoe could not enter into the joke of being forgotten, apparently.  He assisted with gravity at the disposition of the party for the return, when they all reached the carriage.  Rose had the place beside his mother, and Kenby wished March to take his with the general and let him sit with the driver; but he insisted that he would rather walk home, and he did walk till they had driven out of eight.  Then he called a passing one-spanner, and drove to his hotel in comfort and silence.