“Oh!” cried Geoff again, opening round eyes. “But if it isn’t our home, how can it be theirs? They don’t want a home all to themselves.”
“I think they do,” said Theo shortly.
The boy gave him a furtive glance, and thought it wise to change the subject. “Mrs. Warrender is there now. Oh, I say! she will be granny to the babies. I should like to call her granny too. Will she let me, do you think, Warrender? She is always so kind to me.”
“I should advise you not to try.”
“Why, Warrender? Would she be angry? She is always very kind. I went to see her once, as soon as she came home, and she was awfully kind, and understood what I wanted.” Geoff paused here, suddenly catching himself up, and remembering with a forlorn sense that he had gone a long way beyond that in his little life, the experiences which were sufficiently painful, of that day.
“It requires a very wise person to do that,” said Warrender, with an angry smile.
“Yes, to understand you quite right even when you don’t say anything. I say, Warrender, if mamma has to go away for a change, when shall we go?”
“We!” said Warrender significantly. “Are you also in want of a change?”
The boy looked up at him suddenly, with a hasty flush. The tears came to his brave little eyes. He was overpowered by the sudden suggestion, and could not find a word to say.
“Markland is the best change for you, after Eton,” said Theo. “You don’t want to travel with a nursery, I suppose.”
Geoff felt something rise in his throat. Why, it was his own nursery, he wanted to say. It was his own family. Where should he go but where they went? But the words were stopped on his lips, and his magnanimous little heart swelled high. Oh, if he could but fly to his mother!—but to her he had learnt never now to fly.
“Wherever we may go,” said Warrender coldly, “I think you had much better spend your holidays here;” and he got up from the table, leaving Geoff in a tumult of feelings which words can scarcely describe. He had suffered a great deal during the past year, and had said little. A sort of preternatural consciousness that he must keep his own secret, that he must betray nothing to his mother, had come upon him. He sat now silent, his little face twitching and working, a sudden new, unlooked-for horror stealing over him, that he was to be separated from his mother; that he was to be left behind while they went away. It did not seem possible, and yet, with all the rapidity of a child’s imagination, Geoff’s mind flashed over what might happen—he to be left alone here, while they went away. He saw his mother go smiling into the carriage, thinking of the babies, in their little white hoods, little dolls—oh no, dear little helpless creatures, to whom the boy’s heart went out; his little babies as well as his mother’s. But of course she would think of them. She must think of them. And Geoff would be left behind, with no one, nobody to speak to, the great rooms all empty, only the servants about. He remembered what it had been when his mother was married; but then he had the hope that she would come back to him, that all would be well: and now he knew that never, never, as of old, could he have her back. Geoff did not budge from the table for some time after, but sat with his elbows on it and his head in his hands, in the attitude which he had so often been scolded for, with nobody to scold him or take any notice. He thought to himself that he might put his elbows on the table as much as he liked, and nobody would care. But this thought only made the position more terrible. It was only the return of the servants to clear the table, and the old butler’s question, “What’s the matter, Master Geoff?” that roused him. The butler’s tone was far too sympathetic. He was an old servant, and the only one in the house who did not call poor little Geoff My lord. But the boy was not going to accept sympathy. He sprang up from the table with a “Nothing’s the matter. I’m going out for a ride,” and hurried towards the stables, which were now his resource more and more.
This knowledge rankled in Geoff’s heart through all the time of his mother’s convalescence. He was very brave, very magnanimous, without knowing that he was either. That he would not vex his mother was the determination of his soul. She was very sweet, sweeter than ever, but pale, and her hands so thin that you could see the light through them. Though he anticipated with a dull anguish the time when she should go away, when Warrender would take her away, leaving him behind, Geoff resolved that he would say nothing about it, that he would not make her unhappy. He would bear it; one could bear anything when one tried, even spending the holidays by one’s self. But his heart sank at the thought. Supposing she were to stay a month away—that was four weeks; it was thirty days—and he alone, all alone in Markland. And when she came back it would be time for him to go to school. Sometimes he felt as if he must cry out when he thought of this; but he would not say a word, he would not complain; he would bear it rather than vex mamma. When she came downstairs she was so pale. She began to walk
