A QUICK CONVALESCENCE
School was to have re-opened on Monday; but the trustees postponed it a
week, for it was hardly possible to hold the older classes without Mr.
Haley. Miss ’Rill offered her services; but she admitted that the new
methods were quite beyond her and that probably many of Nelson’s older
pupils knew more than she did herself.
On Sunday night, however, Nelson’s condition changed. Dr. Poole had
“staved off” pneumonia, as he expressed it, and the young man began to
gain. That gain was manifested on Monday morning, to Mrs. Beasely’s
delight, by the patient’s consumption of a bowl of chicken broth.
“If he kin eat he’ll live,” she declared, with conviction. “That’s all
he needs now--good food and plenty of it. If I’d ha’ got my Charles to
see it that way an’ put forth an effort to eat, I jest know he’d got
well,” and she went over to stand before the enlarged crayon portrait
of her husband in the dining-room, and wipe away the tears that gushed
over her faded cheeks.
Old Mrs. Scattergood often said that, “Miz’ Beasely worshiped at the
tomb of an idee. Charles Beasely was as mean an’ meachin’ a man as ever
stepped in socks, and ’twas a marcy to Miz’ Beasely when he was taken;
but you couldn’t make her believe it now to save your soul!”
“But why should you want to take the woman’s comfort from her, Ma?”
queried Miss ’Rill. “It makes her more tender-hearted and sweeter, to
believe that her husband was a saint.”
“Humph! like other fules I might mention, she’d ruther cling to a false
idee than know the trewth,” said the birdlike old lady, shaking her
head. “Some wimmen air plumb crazy abeout men. Me? humph! I wouldn’t
worry my head over the best one that ever lived.”
Mrs. Scattergood could not content herself with the prospect of her
daughter’s marriage. The closer the event approached the more she
nagged. Her opinion of Hopewell Drugg was freely expressed throughout
the length and breadth of Polktown. She had got so that she couldn’t
even be nice to little Lottie, and Miss ’Rill had to make the little
girl understand that she mustn’t visit around the corner on High Street
any more.
That gave Lottie more time to go over to Mrs. Beasely’s and listen for
news of Nelson Haley, in whose illness she was deeply interested. When
she was allowed to enter the room to see him, she was almost afraid of
the school teacher, his face was so white and his hands so thin.
“I--I feel like I’d ought to be introduced to you again,” she
stammered, coming close to the bed. “Oh! you poor, poor thing! Let me
_feel_ if you’re the same.”
For little Lottie had never got over that trick of “seeing with her
fingers,” and often preferred to examine an article that way, to sense
its shape, texture and colorings, rather than by visual means. Now she
ran her sensitive finger-tips over Nelson’s face.
“Yes! You’re Nelson Haley,” she sighed. “But oh, my dear! you don’t
look like him.”
At that Nelson gave a weak laugh, and Mrs. Beasely came hurrying in to
see what was the matter.
“Goodness me! you mustn’t make him laugh, Lottie,” cried the anxious
widow.
“What shall I do?” asked Lottie. “Make him cry? It don’t seem as though
that would make him any better,” and Nelson laughed again, sat up in
bed, and demanded more broth.
“For the land’s sake!” ejaculated Mrs. Beasely. “You’re talking like a
re’l convalescent now. And this young lady,” and she tweaked Lottie’s
ear, “is a-doin’ you more good than the other one.”
Nelson looked up quickly. “What other one?” he asked.
“Oh my! don’t you remember of her comin’ to see ye?” asked the widow,
smiling and smirking. “Oh my!”
“Do you mean----?”
“Miss Bowman,” said Mrs. Beasely. “You axed to see her, you know,
and she was mighty kind to come, I should say. She sent them flowers
yonder. Got ’em from Popham Landing.”
Nelson’s brow was knitted while he sipped the broth. “So I asked to see
Annette?” he murmured.
“Quite wild arter her,” said the widow. “’Course, I wouldn’t say
nothin’ abeout it. Young men have funny fancies, I ’xpect, when they
air sick.”
“And she came up and saw me? Yes! seems to me I remember of her
being in the room once. But my memory is rather hazy,” confessed the
young man. “It seems to me at one time that the room was full of
people--shadowy people---- Wasn’t there anyone else to see me?”
“Oh no,” said Mrs. Beasely, bridling a little, and of course not
considering Janice’s practical attentions in the same class with Miss
Bowman’s call. “I should hope not. I wouldn’t have allowed it.”
“Dear me!” said Nelson, whimsically, “you’d be careful of my reputation
as a respectable young man, Mother Beasely, I know.”
“I most sartainly would,” declared the lady, firmly.
“So Annette was the only girl who came to see me?” Nelson mused, and
put away the broth. “I don’t want any more,” he said, and sank back
into the pillow.
Janice did not come to help now that he was better. In fact, as the
weather remained open, she ran back and forth to the seminary every
day, stopping before the widow’s house night and morning to inquire
after the patient. But she did not go in now that Nelson was conscious
and likely to ask questions.
He heard the motor-car come to a halt and then start on again, more
than once; and finally he asked the widow if it wasn’t Janice’s car.
“Sure it is. She’s just taking little Lottie out for a ride,” said the
widow, having already given her bulletin of the patient’s convalescence
to Janice, and now peering through the shutters of the blind.
“I suppose she comes to Hopewell’s on errands,” sighed Nelson, and said
no more about it. Nor did Mrs. Beasely imagine for an instant that
Nelson Haley had more than ordinary interest in Janice Day and her
doings.