We were all sitting around the big hall stove, and papa said:
“Put your feet on the fender, Marion, and get them warm.”
Mama was feeding me with a big spoon of ice-cream, which Reggie tried to
snatch away, and then he would throw red-hot coals in my face.
Screaming:
“Reggie! Reggie! Stop! Stop!” I woke up.
A man was sitting on the bed in my little room, and he was holding my
wrist. I recognized him as a young doctor who had attended Miss Darling
when she had the grippe. He had straight blond hair and a gentle
expression. Standing by him was the girl who had taken the big room on
the first floor a few days before. I had noticed her, because she
dressed so well and had so many visitors. Now she was holding some ice
on my head, and I heard her say to the doctor that she had just put a
hot-water bag on my feet. She was not beautiful like Rose St. Denis, for
she was short and stout, but she had a large, generous mouth, which,
when she laughed, showed the most beautiful teeth, and she laughed a
great deal so that one could not help liking her. “How is she, doctor?”
she asked, and he replied:
“She ought to stay in bed some time. Her temperature is a hundred and
five. I’m afraid of her being left alone. Has she no one to take care of
her?”
“No, no,” I moaned weakly. “I have nobody. They are all dead.”
“Who was that ‘Reggie’ you were calling for?” asked the girl, and I
said:
“He’s dead, too.”
My eyes felt very heavy, and I could not keep them open. I heard their
voices as if in a dream.
“My! but she gave us a scare,” said the girl. “We were just going out of
the front door last night to get a bite of supper over at the Plaza, and
as we opened the door she was coming up the front steps, and she
suddenly threw out her hands as if she were drowning, and would have
fallen down the stairs had not Al caught her.”
There was a long silence, and then I heard her voice again--she was
stroking my hand.
“Poor girl! What a _pretty_ little thing she is.”
I put my cheek against her hand. Somehow it seemed to me natural that
she should be good and kind to me. Then the doctor said:
“I will have her moved to the hospital. This room is too small, and she
will need the best of care.”
“Why can’t I care for her?” asked the girl suddenly. “I can do it! Oh,
you don’t believe me, eh?” I heard them both laugh, and she said:
“It’ll be lots of fun. To begin with, you carry her down to my room.”
“Do you really mean that?” I heard him ask, and her reply: “Why, of
course, I do.”
I did not say a word. I did not care much what they did to me, and there
seemed to me no reason why I should not be cared for by this stranger. I
suppose it was my weakness, but perhaps it was the consciousness that I
would have done the same in her place. Poor girls instinctively depend
upon each other in crises like these. And then this girl--Lois Barret
was her name--had a jolly way that made even the most trying service
seem like a game to her. She acted as if she really enjoyed doing
something that another person would have considered a trial. She kept
saying:
“It’ll be all kinds of fun. Come along, doctor, let’s get her right down
now. Can you do it?”
“Easily,” declared the doctor.
“Ah!” said she. “It’s fine to have big, broad shoulders. I wish I were a
man--like you.” She added the last two words softly, and the doctor
chuckled. They wrapped the blankets around me, and the doctor lifted me
up in his arms and carried me down the stairs. I was so weak, that even
this slight movement affected me, and I fainted.
I must have been even iller than the doctor thought, for I did not know
anything more for a long time. Then one day I opened my heavy eyes, to
find myself in a big sunny room, and dreamily I watched Lois Barret
hovering over me like a ministering angel. Then, in the evening, I have
a dim remembrance of the doctor standing in the window and putting his
arm around Lois, and it seemed to me he was kissing her. I called out:
“Oh, I am not asleep. I can see you.”
They both laughed, and Lois came over and gave me something to swallow
and, as I dropped asleep, they seemed to grow into one person.