Page:The Ivory Tower (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/83

THE IVORY TOWER "Whose nurse, please?" Rosanna asked of Davey.

"Why, hasn't he got a nurse?" Davey himself, as always, but desired lucidity. "She's doing her duty by him all the same!"

On which Cissy's young wit at once apprehended. "It's one of Mr. Betterman's taking a joy-ride in honour of his recovery! Did you ever hear anything so cool?"

She had appealed to her friends alike, but Rosanna, under the force of her suggestion, was already in advance. "Then father himself must be ill!" Miss Gaw had declared, moving rapidly to the quarter in which he so incongruously waited and leaving Davey to point a rapid moral for Cissy's benefit while this couple followed.

"If he is so upset that he hasn't been trusted alone I'll be hanged if I don't just see it!"

But the marvel was the way in which after an instant Cissy saw it too. "You mean because he can't stand Mr. Betterman's perhaps not dying?"

"Yes, dear ingenuous child—he has wanted so to see him out."

"Well then, isn't it what we're all wanting?"

"Most undoubtedly, pure pearl of penetration!" Davey returned as they went. "His pick-up will be a sell," he ruefully added; "even though it mayn't quite kill any one of us but Mr. Gaw!" 69