't
it dreadfully late--or--or early for you to be up?" he went on
confusedly.

"It's the morning," said Elsa, "but we haven't been in bed all
night--Frances and I. At least, we had only been in bed half an hour or
so, when we were called up."

"What was it?" asked Geoff, sleepily still. "Was the house on fire?"

"Oh, Geoff, don't be silly!" said Elsa; "it's--it's much worse. Mamma
has been so ill--she is still."

Geoff started up now.

"Do you want me to go for the doctor?" he said.

"The doctor has been twice already, and he's coming back at nine
o'clock," she answered sadly. "He thought her a tiny bit better when he
came the last time. But she's very ill--she must be kept most
_exceedingly_ quiet, and----"

"I'll get up now at once," said Geoff; "I won't be five minutes, Elsa.
Tell mamma I'd have got up before if I'd known."

"But, Geoff," said Elsa, firmly, though reluctantly, "it's no use your
hurrying up for that. You can't see her--you can't possibly see her
before you go to school, anyway. The doctor says she is to be kept
_perfectly_ quiet, and not worried in any way."

"I wouldn't worry her, not when she's ill," said Geoff, hastily.

[Illustration: IT WAS ELSA.]

"You couldn't help it," said Elsa. "She--she was very worried about you
last night, and she kept talking about your umbrella in a confused sort
of way now and then all night. We quieted her at last by telling her we
had given you one to go to school with. But if she saw you, even for an
instant, she would begin again. The doctor said you were not to go into
her room."

A choking feeling had come into Geoff's throat when Elsa spoke about the
umbrella; a very little more and he would have burst into tears of
remorse. But as she went on, pride and irritation got the better of him.
He was too completely unused to think of or for any one before himself,
to be able to do so all of a sudden, and it was a sort of relief to
burst out at his sister in the old way.

"I think you're forgetting yourself, Elsa. Is mamma not as much to _me_
as to you girls? Do you think I haven't the sense to know how to behave
when any one's ill? I tell you I just will and shall go to see her,
whatever you say;" and he began dragging on his socks as if he were
going to rush down to his mother's room that very moment.

Elsa grew still paler than she had been before.

"Geoff," she said, "you must listen to me. It was for that I came up to
tell you. You must _not_ c