Read Online The Prodigal Girl by Grace Livingston Hill - Free Book Online

have to take him in hand, bring him up to date and open his eyes to a few facts. Times were changed of course, and Chester hadn’t realized it, but she had never expected him to show weakness, physical weakness, just because his whims were crossed. Whims! They were worse than that. They were antiques, wished on him by a former generation. How could he have been so blind as not to have seen before this that the world had outgrown them?
    Yet she lay and quivered at the thought of her father ill. Her dad had always been so strong, so ready to give her anything she wanted.
    She stole out to the hall and listened when the doctor talked in a low tone to her mother, straining her ears and trying to hear what they were saying. She could not sleep until she knew he was out of danger.
    Then she heard her father call to the doctor. His voice sounded weak, strained, yet insistent.
    The doctor went into the living room again, and Mrs. Thornton came slowly upstairs. Betty could see that she was weeping even before she lifted her tear-stained face.
    “He’s all right now, I hope, dear!” said the mother. “The doctor wants him to get to sleep. I’m going to put a hot water bag in the bed and get his things out. The doctor doesn’t think the bruise was serious.”
    There was a quiver in the end of her voice that gave Betty a strange uneasiness.
    “It’s not like Chester to pass out!” said Betty with a half return of her habitual flippancy.
    The mother shrank visibly from the words.
    “I wouldn’t, Betty dear,” she said in a half-apologetic tone. “Your father doesn’t like you to call him that. It doesn’t sound respectful—”
    “Rats!” said Betty inelegantly. “Are you trying to be an old stiff, too?”
    “Betty! Really! Your father is very sensitive just now, and the doctor says we must be very careful. He says he is in a very dangerous state. He says this has been coming on for a long time—”
    Betty gave her a startled look.
    “For what reason?” she said and pinioned her mother with her glance.
    “I’m afraid it’s business,” she said with a catch in her breath. “He’s been lying awake at nights, oh, for weeks and perhaps longer. I don’t know. He didn’t tell me till recently. And then this tonight—”
    “Business? What’s the matter with business?” asked Betty sharply.
    “I’m afraid things are in a very bad way.”
    “Whaddaya mean, bad way?”
    “Well, I’m not sure, but I’m afraid your father has failed. I’m afraid it’s just as bad as it can be. I know he was expecting something to happen yesterday that would turn the tide either way. And just now when the doctor asked him if he couldn’t get away from business and take a real rest he said, ‘Oh, the business doesn’t matter anymore!’ just like that, as if everything was all over. And I think that he is kind of desperate about it. I feel that we shall have to do everything we can to make him happy and make him understand that it doesn’t matter whether we have any money or not if he only gets well. The doctor said that this was a warning. He didn’t say just what, but from the questions he asked I’m sure he was afraid of stroke, or paralysis, or some of those terrible diseases. Betty, we must be awfully careful not to worry your father. But there! I believe the doctor is persuading him to come up. Get that other pair of pink striped blankets and lay them on the radiator. We might need them. He said he was so cold—”
    Betty eyed her mother keenly. Evidently Dad had not told her yet. That was decent of him. No need in stirring Mother up.
    Betty flew around efficiently, helping her mother, thinking her keen, stubborn young thoughts, trying to look a new situation in the face, and rebelling furiously at having her young life disrupted by any financial catastrophe. It wasn’t like her dad to go flooey and leave them all in the mud. He must have done something awfully foolish to get things all in a muddle. She couldn’t