Page:Early Autumn (1926).pdf/65

 well to-day," smiling, and, "Perhaps the doctors are wrong." Sybil was watching her brother now, in that quiet, mysterious way she had, watching him cautiously lest he discover that she was watching; for he discovered troubles easily, with the kind of clairvoyance which comes to people who have always been ill.

They barely talked at all during the lunch. Sybil planned to take her brother in the trap to ride over the farm and down to the white dunes.

"Higgins is going with us," she said. "He's going to show us the new litter of foxes in the black thicket."

And Jack said, "It's a funny thing about Higgins. He always discovers such things before any one else. He knows when it will be a good day for fishing and just when it is going to rain. He's never wrong."

"No . . ." said the grandfather suddenly. "It's a funny thing. He's never wrong . . . not in all the years I've known him."

It was the only time he said anything during the meal, and Olivia, trying to fill in the gaps in the conversation, found it difficult, with the boy sitting opposite her looking so pale and ill. It seemed to her sometimes that he had never really been born, that he had always remained in some way a part of herself. When he was out of her sight, she had no peace because there was always a gnawing terror that she might never see him again. And she knew that deep inside the frail body there was a spirit, a flame, descended from the old man and from herself, which burned passionately with a desire for life, for riding, for swimming, for running across the open meadows. . . a flame that must always be smothered. If only he had been like Anson, his father, who never knew that hunger for life. . ..

"Olivia, my dear . . ." The old man was speaking.