GRETTA AT HOME
“Darling Gretta,” wrote Margot, “we miss you most frightfully in the
dormer. Give uncle my love, and tell him to get well so that you can
come back before the end of the term. Mother told me before she sailed
about afterwards, and how you’re not coming back next term, I mean; and
Josy and I think you were a brick to be so brave about staying at home,
and letting Sybil come instead. Miss Read thinks so, too, for I asked
her, and I expect Miss Slater does as well; anyhow, Monsieur Villon was
nearly crazy, Rhoda says, when she went to her violin lesson; he had
just heard about your having gone, and was muttering all kinds of French
words that she couldn’t understand.
“Sybil’s getting on with her strokes awfully well. Helen is frightfully
pleased. Josy and I get her to practise with us, and yesterday Helen
came and watched, and Sybil made some fearfully neat shots. Helen said
she shouldn’t wonder if she--Sybil, I mean--made a good centre-forward
some day. That’s frightfully bucking, isn’t it? Tell uncle; he’ll be
pleased. Sybil talks of nothing but hockey, and she’s as keen as keen
can be; Josy and I’ll be awfully bucked if she’s ever captain.
“We’re all talking more than ever about the Hope-Scott Shield--specially
in the dormer, and we wish you were there. We haven’t done much yet,
though. Stella dashed out into the road to save a dog from being run
over when we were out in the crocodile yesterday, but it didn’t come
off--the bravery, I mean--because the dog had never meant to be run
over, and Stella nearly was, herself; and the horse shied, and Miss Read
was quite angry, and we don’t think she even _thought_ it was brave. In
fact, she said it was silly. We’re so near the end of the term, only two
weeks to-morrow, that someone’ll have to do something soon, so perhaps a
chance will come. I wish you were here to try for it. We’re always
talking about you in the dormer, and we’re taking jolly good care of
Sybil....”
Gretta folded up the letter, which was becoming very frail with much
reading, and looked up at the clock to see whether it was time for the
doctor to take his next dose of medicine. A month had gone by since the
day of Mrs. Fleming’s departure, and more than a month since Gretta’s
return to take up the reins of her father’s house again. The month
seemed like a year, the girl said to herself, but somehow or other not
an unhappy year.
For Gretta, at home, had been quite as busy in another way as at the
Cliff School, and in nursing and housekeeping time had been spent that
might otherwise have passed in longing for all the joys of the term;
also, she could not help knowing that her home-coming had been of the
utmost service to her father. His illness had been much more severe, and
had lasted much longer, than anyone had at first expected; even now,
after a month of invalidism, the doctor, much against his will, was
still unable to leave his bed, and the worries that the enforced rest
brought in its train were difficult for the patient to bear.
Gretta understood a little of this, and, though she sighed as she
replaced Margot’s letter in its envelope, she took care to put on a
cheerful expression of countenance before mounting the stairs to the
patient’s room, medicine-glass in hand.
But this afternoon the doctor was in a particularly gloomy mood, as
Gretta found when she entered his room; he spoke in a fretful and weak
voice from his bed--the nurse was evidently to blame in some way.
“Gretta, you should learn to bring that medicine in _time_. Will you
never be punctual?”
“The clock struck three, dad, as I came up the stairs,” replied the
nurse.
“Then the clock is wrong; it can’t have been set properly since I’ve
been upstairs.” The doctor relapsed once more into a state of gloom; any
disturbing trifle would plunge him into depression, nowadays, and Gretta
tried to devise a means of comfort.
“Shall I stay with you a little, dad? I could sew, or something, up
here, and talk to you.” The girl had spent many afternoons by her
father’s bedside, recounting tales of life as spent at the Cliff School;
of hockey matches, of dormitory feasts, and daring escapades. He already
knew about Long Jake; and the wonders of the “Little House” had been
explained; the story of Margot’s adventure with the pony had been
narrated, too; and so had the tale of the girls’ various efforts to win
the Hope-Scott Shield. There was no little detail that Gretta had not
recounted for the benefit of the invalid, and she now turned over in her
mind whether there was any incident that might serve its turn again.
But the doctor was not to be interested so easily this afternoon. “I
need change,” he declared irritably. “Unless I can get some definite
change I don’t see _when_ I shall be about again.” He puckered up his
brow in a way that his nurse could not bear to see.
“Dr. Moore said he’d come in this evening,” she remarked comfortingly;
“he’ll be sure to sit up here and smoke, and he’ll be company for you.”
“_Moore!_” exclaimed the pessimistic patient. “He’s got _my_ work to do
as well as his own. _He’ll_ be the next to break down.”
Gretta was in despair, and, welcoming any diversion from the subject
ever uppermost in the doctor’s mind, exclaimed with surprise as the
tinkle of the front-door bell was heard from below.
“I wonder who that is?” she remarked when Ann’s steps were heard
mounting the stairs.
“Probably a bill,” declared the doctor, in disconsolate tones. “I don’t
know _how_----”
Tap, tap, came at the bedroom door, and the maid’s voice was heard
outside. “Miss Gretta, you’re wanted.”
“I won’t be a second, dad,” said the nurse; she ran into the passage, in
her eagerness nearly falling over Ann.
“Whatever is it?” she whispered.
“Such a nice gentleman! As tall as tall! And _that_ broad! And he’s
asking for _you_, miss!”
“But who _is_ he?” inquired Gretta in dismay.
“He’s a Mr. Courtney--so he _said_. And he said, too, ‘Ask Miss Margaret
Grey if I can speak to her for a minute; she’ll p’rhaps have heard my
name from Mrs. Fleming!’”
“It’s Long Jake!” cried Gretta in amazement, her cheeks turned pink, and
she rushed downstairs, shyness forgotten; while mystification as to why
the visitor had come was swallowed up in a feeling of excitement and
delight that at last she was to see her school hero face to face!
An hour later it was a very energetic Gretta who was putting finishing
touches to a dainty tea-tray set for two, and destined for the
sick-room. Upstairs, from the said room, came the sound of cheerful
voices--the doctor was evidently enjoying the company of his visitor.
Gretta’s face dimpled with smiles as his laugh rang out in appreciation
of some story. “Margot _said_ Long Jake always came in the nick of
time,” she thought to herself; “and it’s true--he _does_!”
For Mr. Courtney, in explaining to the girl the reason of his unexpected
appearance, had told her of Mrs. Fleming’s suggestion that he would
probably be welcome at the doctor’s house if he could make time to drop
in there. “Of course, I’ll go straight away,” he explained to Gretta, as
she came into the drawing-room to greet him, “if you think that your
father’s not well enough for visitors; but I’m going back to Australia
in a few weeks’ time, you know, as I’ve nothing to keep me in England
any longer; and, if I could be of any use meanwhile----”
“I believe you’re just the very person!” Gretta said, as emphatically as
her shyness of the stranger--who was not really a stranger at all--would
allow. “Dad _does_ need cheering up so badly, and you see he knows all
about you. The ‘Little House,’ and the----” She stopped, thinking that
perhaps she had said too much.
The visitor looked rather embarrassed. “Well, that’s over now,” he said
quietly, after a minute. “The poor old chap who lived there has nothing
more to worry about any longer.” Then, with a sudden and boyish change
of tone, “Look here, Miss Gretta, suppose you ask your father if he’d
like to see me?”
In five minutes he had been in the doctor’s room, and that was an hour
ago, now; the girl felt as though her nursing duties were halved, to say
the least of it, as she carried the tea-tray up the stairs, and knocked
at the door of the sick-room.
“Here’s Gretta,” said the patient, in the voice of a rapidly recovering
convalescent. “Why, Courtney, you’re a doctor yourself, man. I’ve not
felt so glad to see a meal for a month or more.”