"If I felt the way you do, Mr. Medfield, I'd do something."
"What would you do?" He watched her face.
"Well--I'd find things." The face in its cap filled with little thoughts
that came and went.... "Dear me! There's so many things, I wouldn't know
which to do!"
"Suppose you tell _me_ a few."
"Well--there's things.... Jimmie Sullivan needs a new leg, for one
thing. He needs it the worst way----"
"_Who_ is Jimmie Sullivan?" asked the millionaire.
"He's in the Children's Ward. Belongs to nobody--as you might say. We're
kind of carrying him along till he gets on his feet."
"Gets on his legs, you mean?" His face had lost its fretted look; it was
smiling a little.
"It's a frame leg he needs--one of the kind that lets out and stretches
as he grows. Dr. Carmon's made him one--a sort of make-shift leg.... A
good one costs two hundred and twenty-five dollars."
"Would you mind giving me a pencil and paper?" said Medfield.
Aunt Jane brought it from the table and he made a note.
"Two hundred and twenty-five, you said?"
She nodded. "If he don't have it--a good frame one--his leg will be the
kind that flops all round.... I've seen beggars with 'em sometimes,
selling pencils and so on. I can't hardly bear to see 'em that way!"
"I should think not! Horrible!"
"Then, there's Mrs. Pelton----"
"I don't seem to remember--Mrs. Pelton?" he said politely.
"Why she's the one you're--" Aunt Jane stopped suddenly.
"Yes?"
"She's a woman that came the same day you did," she said safely.
"Oh!" His mind seemed to be looking back--to the day when he came to the
House of Mercy, perhaps.
Aunt Jane did not disturb him.
Presently he took up his pencil with a little sigh. "What were you
saying about a Mrs. Pelton?" he asked.
"She came the day you did and _she's_ sitting up! And her case was a
good deal worse than yours." She was looking at him almost severely.
"But-- She had her operation sooner--than I did! _I_ had to wait--almost
a week--You know I had to wait!" He was like a sick boy--with his
excuses and his injured look.
"Yes--she was operated on--a day or two sooner--maybe. But she's acted
better than you have, every way." She looked at him over her spectacles.
"And she's a little mite of a thing. Don't come up to your shoulder
hardly."
He smiled ruefully and took up the pencil. "I am going to try---- What
about this Mrs. Pelton? What would you do for her if you were as badly
off--as I am?"
She gave him a quick smile, out of her cap. "Why--I'd--I'd--I declare I
don't know just what you could _do_ for her! She's got so much pluck,
it 'most seems as if you couldn't do much.... But I can kind of see
her--" She was looking at it. "I can see that if she had, maybe a
hundred dollars, say--of her own, unexpected like--when she left the
hospital--I can just see the things she would do with it! There's four
of the children and a kind of fiddling husband--_good_, you know-- But
the way men are----"
"Yes, I know." His pencil was making absent notes. "What's his
business?"
"She told me--he's a puddler. I don't know just what puddling is.... He
works in a shop. You know, maybe, how they 'puddle'?"
"I've heard of puddling, yes."
"It's a respectable business, I guess. It sounds something the way he
looks."
"The way he looks!"
She nodded. "'Puddler' makes me feel the way he does. It's a kind o'
queer word."
He glanced at his paper. "Is there anything else you happen to think of
for me to do?" The tone was dry, but a little amused.
"Well, there's folks--plenty of folks. You don't have to be in a
hospital very long before you begin to know about folks--and begin to
wish you was made of money."
"It's a good place for me, then.... I may get cured all through!" He
laughed a little harshly.
"I hope you will," said Aunt Jane. She was looking at him with a deep,
big kindness that suddenly broke through the little crust of cynicism in
his face. He leaned forward and held out his hand.
"Thank you," he said.