"No, I"m going to bed."
"Don"t go yet. I"m coming up. I want to tell you something."
A moment later Connie opened the door, and closed it carefully behind her.
"Is Bertie asleep?"
"Yes."
"It"s all over!" she announced tragically. "Gerald and I have had an awful quarrel, and he swears he"ll never live to see another dawn."
"Of course he won"t, I doubt if he has ever seen one. What"s his trouble?"
"Everything! He wants me to sit at his feet every hour in the day and adore him, and how can I adore a man who is afraid of a b.u.mblebee, and can"t drive, and sleeps with an umbrella over his head to shut out the light? I just simply can"t stand him another minute!"
"But, Connie, you were so crazy about him, you wouldn"t listen to a word against him."
"I know it. I"ve been a perfect little idiot." Connie was sobbing now on Miss Lady"s shoulder. "The first time I saw him he"d just gotten home from Europe. He was playing at a concert. Everybody said he was a genius, and his eyes were so wonderful, and I had never seen anybody like him. The more he snubbed me the crazier I got about him. It wasn"t until Cousin Don came back that I saw him as he really is."
Miss Lady patted the heaving shoulders, but said nothing.
"And the very minute," Connie continued tempestuously, "that I began to feel differently, Gerald began to like me. He has worked himself up to a terrible pitch, and doesn"t want me out of his sight for a minute. I feel as if I"d been living on chocolate creams for three months!"
"Connie!" Miss Lady took the tear-stained face between her hands. "I"m glad it isn"t Gerald. I"m glad from the bottom of my heart, but are you sure it isn"t somebody else?"
Connie"s blue eyes, never very steadfast, shifted uneasily, and Miss Lady went on earnestly:
"Are you quite sure you aren"t doing just what you did before, getting infatuated, and making yourself miserable over some one who doesn"t care for you?"
"But he does!" burst out Connie indignantly; "he cares for me more than for anybody in the world!"
"How do you know?"
"He"s told me so! There--I oughtn"t to have told! I swore I wouldn"t until after the trial. But you won"t breathe it, Miss Lady? Promise you won"t even ask me to tell you anything more?"
Miss Lady looked at her strangely.
"I know everybody is going to disapprove," Connie went on recklessly, "and say horrid things about him. But I don"t care if you will just stand by me. And you will, won"t you?"
Twice Miss Lady tried to speak before the words would come, then:
"Yes," she whispered almost breathlessly, "yes, I promise to stand by you,--and by him."
After Connie had gone she went back to her seat on the railing and stared out into the gathering night. For the first time in her life the dark immensity terrified her. The beacon lights by which she had steered were no longer visible. The great lonely sea of life lay about her, and she had lost her course.
"Daddy!" she whispered in terror, "Daddy help me!"
But only the faint cry of a whippoorwill in the valley below answered her call. A trembling seized her and feeling her way to the bed where Bertie lay, she crept in beside him, cuddling the soft, warm little body close, and checking her sobs that they might not wake him. Long after the whippoorwill had ceased its plaint, she lay there staring into the darkness, waiting for the dawn.
CHAPTER XXVII
The autumn sun struggled palely through the windows of the Children"s Hospital, and sent a beam across the high narrow bed where Chick Flathers lay, suspiciously watching the proceedings of the attendant nurses. He was not at all sure that he had done right in coming. For two days he had been made to stay in bed, and this morning he had suffered his third bath and been deprived of his breakfast. His being there at all was merely a concession to friendship. Mis" Queerington had persuaded him. He wouldn"t have come for the Other One, the fat one who smiled and talked about The Willows Awful Home. He wouldn"t even come for Aunt "Telia, but Mis" Queerington was different; she understood fellows. She had said that the doctors would fix his throat so that he could yell louder than any boy on Billy-goat Hill! All the suppressed yells of a dozen years quivered on his lips at the thought of it!
"Chick, here"s a orange and some cookies I brought you." It was Aunt "Telia who sat down by the bed and took his hand. "If you ever get well Aunt "Tella"s going to take you to the circus, or the seash.o.r.e, or somewheres."
The seash.o.r.e presented no concrete idea, so Chick preferred to dwell upon the circus, but even that alluring prospect could not hold his attention while so many disturbing things were taking place about him.
One nurse had felt his pulse, another had put a gla.s.s tube in his mouth, and now a third was wheeling in a curious little bed on wheels.
He turned restlessly from the black-browed, anxious face bending over him to the door where Mrs. Queerington was entering. But he knew by experience that it would be some time before she reached him. All those other sick duffers would want her to talk to them, and the nurses would stop her, and the young house-doctor would claim a flower for his b.u.t.tonhole. Chick hated them all indiscriminately. It seemed an hour before her bright, rea.s.suring face bent over him, and he heard her say:
"It won"t be long, now, Chicky Boy. Dr. Wyeth will be here soon, and they will give you a ride on this funny little wagon. I wonder what Skeeter Sheeley is doing about this time? Going to school, I expect."
This diverted Chick marvelously. The thought of Skeeter having to spend the morning in the schoolroom, made his own lot less hard.
"Is Number Seventeen prepared for the operation?" he heard some one ask, and at the same moment Aunt "Tella"s fingers closed on his like a vise.
Then the big doctor, who had brought him there, appeared at the foot of his bed.
"Ah, Mrs. Queerington!" he was saying, "the very sight of you ought to hearten up these youngsters. But you are still paler than I like to see you. Been overdoing again?"
She shook her head. "I"m all right, but what about your patient?"
The doctor stroked his chin and appeared to be interested in the ceiling. "Some rather grave complications. Very anemic. Very little to work on. Possibly an even chance. However--" he shrugged his broad shoulders. "Has he any people?"
"No, except this foster-aunt who supports him. Myrtella!"
But Myrtella had turned her back at sight of the doctor, and refused to look up.
Chick narrowly watching the two speakers at the foot of the bed, and trying vainly to understand what they were saying about him, was relieved when Dr. Wyeth handed Miss Lady a book and said lightly:
"You see that I, like everybody else, have fallen a victim to "Khalil Samad." I understand it is already in its tenth edition. Young Morley has a career before him, if he gets through this trial. Do you know when it is set for?"
"November the sixth."
"So soon as that? Well, I don"t know the young man, but I hope he"ll be cleared. I want him to write some more books for me to read. I"m sorry Kinner has charge of the prosecution. He"d rather convict an innocent man than a guilty one. All right, my boy, I guess we are ready."
"Don"t try to get up!" admonished the nurse to Chick; "I"ll lift you over."
But Chick scorned a.s.sistance. Hadn"t he only last week valiantly bucked the center in a football game between the Bean Alley Busters, and the Shanty Boat b.u.ms, and, covered with mud and blood and glory, been carried from the field? They needn"t think because he was little and thin and couldn"t talk that he was a baby! He got himself on to the wheeled stretcher, but refused to lie down.
"Let him sit up then," said Mrs. Queerington. "He likes to see where he is going, don"t you, Chick? Here goes our automobile! Honk! Honk!"
The nurse wheeled him through the tall, gloomy halls, while Myrtella shambled at one side, clinging to his hand, and wiping her eyes. Miss Lady flitted along on the other, telling him about the new football that was going to be on his bed when he woke up.
Then they halted, and Myrtella bent over him wildly. "Chick!" she cried, her face suddenly contorted, "look at me just once more! Tell me you fergive me, Chicky! Oh, if they kill you--!"