“People get over that, don’t they?” said Jock, with an awestruck interrogation in his voice.

“They do; and I hope much from getting him into a warmer atmosphere, but the child is so much reduced that the risk is great, and I should not dare not to have his mother with him.”  Then, as Jock was silent, “I have told you because you can make a great difference to their comfort by not showing how much it costs you to let her go.”

Jock drew the bed clothes over his face, and an odd stifled sound was heard from under them.  He remained thus perdu, while directions were being given to John for the night, but as the doctor was leaving the room, emerged and said—-

“Bring him in before he goes.”

In a short time, for it was most important not to lose the fine weather, the doctor carried Armine in swathed in rugs and blankets, a pale, sunken, worn face, and great hollow eyes looking out at the top.

The mother said something cheerful about a live mummy, but the two poor boys gazed at one another with sad, earnest, wistful eyes, and wrung one another’s hands.

“Don’t forget,” gasped Armine, labouring for breath.

And Jock answered—-

“All right, Armie; good-bye.  I’m coming to morrow,” with a choking, quivering attempt at bravery.

“Yes, to-morrow,” said poor Mother Carey, bending over him.  “My boy-—my poor good boy, if I could but cut myself in two!  I can’t tell you how thankful I am to you for being so good about it.  That dear good Johnny will do all he can, and it is only till tomorrow.  You’ll sleep most of the time.”

“All right, mother,” was again all that Jock could manage to utter, and the kisses that followed seemed to him the most precious he had known.  He hid his face again, bearing his trouble the better because the lull of violent pain quelled by opiates, so that his senses were all as in a dream bound up.  When he looked up again at the clink of glass, it was Cecil whom he saw measuring off his draught.

“You!” he exclaimed.

“Yes, Medlicott said I might stay till four, and give the Monk a chance of a sleep.  That fellow can always snooze away off hand, and he is as sound as a top in the next room; but I was to give you this at two.”

“You’re sure it’s the right stuff?”

“I should think so.  We’ve practice enough in the family to know how to measure off a dose by this time.”

“How is it you are out here still?  This is Thursday, isn’t it?  We meant to have been half way home, to be in time for the matches.”

“I’m not going back this half, worse luck.  They were mortally afraid these measles would make me get tender in the chest, like all the rest of us, so I’ve got nothing to do but be dragged about with Fordham after churches and picture galleries and mountains,” said Cecil, in a tone of infinite disgust.  “I declare it made me half mad to look at the Lake of Lucerne, and recollect that we might have been in the eight.”