"I wonder how soon I shall be able to go for a drive," said Ferdy. "Will you ask the big doctor the next time he comes, mamma? I should like to see Draymoor again. I've never forgotten that day I went there with papa. And now I understand about it so much better. Miss Lilly says it isn't that the people are very poor--they earn a lot of money when they are at work, but then they spend it all instead of spreading it over the times they haven't work. Isn't it a pity they can't be taught something else to do for the idle times, to keep them from quarrelling with each other and being unkind to their wives and children?"
Mrs. Ross looked at Ferdy with surprise and some misgiving. It was doubtless Miss Lilly who had talked to him about the Draymoor people. Was it quite wise of her to do so? Ferdy was so sensitive already, and his illness seemed to have made him even more "old-fashioned." To hear him talk as he was doing just now, one could easily have believed him twice his real age. But a second glance at his face made her feel easy again. He was speaking in a tone of quiet interest, but not in any nervous or excited way.
"Yes," she replied, "there is plenty to be done to improve Draymoor, and at present no one seems to take any special charge of it. If your father was less busy and richer, I know he would like to try to do something for the people there."
"Miss Lilly says if there was any one to look after the boys it would be such a good thing," said Ferdy. "I hope Jesse Piggot won't go back there to live."
Then they went on to talk of other things. Ferdy greatly approved of the German cakes, and his mother's spirits rose higher as she saw him eating them with a good appetite and making little jokes with his sister.
The rest of the evening passed happily. Ferdy amused himself for some time by "trying" his new slate. He drew two or three animals without any model, and was delighted to find that Chrissie recognised them all, and that they did not compare very badly with the outlines she had brought him.
"I am tired now," he said as he put down his pencil with a little sigh, but a sigh of contentment as much as of weariness, "but I know what I'll do to-morrow, Chrissie. I'll _study_ one animal's head, or perhaps a bird. If those old swallows would but settle for a bit on the window-sill, or even on one of the branches close by, I'm sure I could do them. What a pity it is they can't understand what we want, for I always feel as if they knew all about us."