It wasn't like mother to mind anything like that so
much.
Dick came in about half an hour later. He had been home to dinner, and
had gone out again to a cricket match.
"Mother has gone to bed," said Dorothy rather importantly. "She doesn't
want to be disturbed, and you are not to go to her. She's got a
headache, and father isn't coming home."
[Sidenote: Dick's Strange Silence]
Dick looked at her very hard, and without speaking went straight
upstairs, listened a little, and opened his mother's door. "He _is_ a
tiresome boy!" thought Dorothy; "now mother will think I never told
him."
Louisa brought in a poached egg, and some baked apples as he came down
again.
"Cook says it's so late, you had better make it your supper, sir," she
said.
"Mother wants a hot-water bottle," answered Dick; "she's as cold as ice.
I think you or cook had better go up and see about her. Perhaps she'd
better have a fire."
"A fire in August! Oh, Dick, how _ridiculous_!" exclaimed Dorothy.
"All right, sir," said Louisa, taking the indiarubber bottle he had
brought down; "don't you worry."
Dick took a book, and planting his elbows on the table, seemed to be
reading; in reality he was blinking his eyelashes very hard, to keep
back tears.
Dorothy thought the whole world was going mad. As far as she knew the
only trouble in it was her own.
"Aren't you going to take any supper, Dick?" she said plaintively.
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