Page:Temple Bailey--The Gay cockade.djvu/177

 had been no bits of gay brocade to light the mid-Victorian dullness of his mother's dining-room, no daffodils on a radiant morning, no white lilacs on a purple twilight, no slender goddess, mysterious as the moon.

It was in the middle of the following winter that I began to realize that Perry was not well. He had come home on a snowy night, tired and chilled to the bone. He was late and Rosalie had kept dinner waiting for him. It was a rather sorry affair when it was served. Perry pushed his chair back and did not eat. I had as little appetite for it as he, but I did my best. I had arrived on an earlier train, with some old prints that I wanted to show him. Rosalie and I looked at them after dinner, but Perry crouched over the fire and coughed at intervals.

At last I couldn't stand it any longer.

"He needs some hot milk, a foot bath, and to be tucked up in bed."

Rosalie stared at me above the prints. "Perry?"

"Yes. He isn't well."

"Don't croak, Jim Crow."

But I knew what I was talking about. "I am going to get him to bed. You can have the milk ready when I come down."

It developed that there was no milk. I walked half a mile to a road house and brought back 171