"It"s so still! Does n.o.body ever speak out loud?" whispered Dorothy to her mother, half-afraid of her own footfalls, though she now wore a pair of felt slippers in place of the shoes she had yesterday discarded.
"It"s the biggest, cleanest, quietest place I could even dream of!"
But Mrs. Chester did not answer, save by a nod and a finger upon lip; and so following the guide a.s.signed them, they came to one of the open bridges connecting two of the hospital buildings, and there was father John, in a rolling chair, wearing a spotless dressing-gown, and holding out both hands toward them, while his eyes fairly shone with delight. An orderly, in a white uniform, was pushing the chair along the bridge, which was so wide and looked down upon such beautiful grounds that it reminded Dorothy of Bellevieu, and he stopped short at their approach.
He even stepped back a few paces, the better to leave them free for their interview.
But if there was any emotion to be displayed at that meeting, it was not of a gloomy sort; and it was almost in his wife"s very words that the postman exclaimed:
"To think I should get impatient, lose my head, tumble down, and--up into this fine place! Where I"ve heard the best of news and live like a lord! Who wouldn"t give his legs a rest, for a spell, if he could have such a chair as this to loll in while another man does his walking for him! Well, how"s the girl? Why, since when have you taken to wearing slippers so much too big for you? I should think they"d bother you in walking as much as my limpsy feet did me."
Nothing escaped this cheery hospital patient even now, and before Mrs.
Chester could interpose, Dorothy had told her own tale and how she had been a hospital patient herself. How now she had been "discharged" and was ready to go home with all her legs and arms intact, a thing she had feared might not be the case when she had ventured thither.
"To think I should have been so silly as to believe that poor boy! Or that, if I had followed his wrong directions, I shouldn"t have gotten here at all. Oh! isn"t it beautiful! What makes some of the women dress all in white and some in blue? When I grow up I believe I"ll be a hospital nurse myself."
"Good idea. Excellent. Stick to it. See if you can make that notion last as long as that other one about being a great artist; or, yes, the next scheme was to write books--books that didn"t "preach" but kept folks laughing all the way through."
"Now, father! You needn"t tease, and you haven"t answered, about the different dresses. Do you know, already?" protested Dorothy, kissing his hand that rested on the arm of his chair.
"Oh! yes, I know. The orderly explained, for I wasn"t any wiser than you before he did. The blue girls are "probationers," or under-graduates.
They have to study and take care of cranky sick folks for three whole years before they can wear those white clothes. Think of that, little Miss Impatience, before you decide on the business! Three years. That"s a long time to be shut up with aches and pains and groans. But a n.o.ble life. One that needs patience; even more than the Peabody course!"
They all laughed, even Dorothy who was being teased. After any new experience, it was her propensity immediately to desire to continue the delightful novelty. After a visit to a famous local picture gallery, she had returned home fully intent upon becoming an artist who should be, also, famous. To that end she had wasted any number of cheap pads and pencils, and had littered her mother"s tidy rooms with "sketches"
galore. When she had gone with a schoolmate to a Peabody recital, she had been seized with the spirit of music and had almost ruined a naturally sweet voice--as well as the hearers" nerves--by a self-instructed course of training, which her teasing father had sometimes likened to a cat concert on a roof. However, upon learning that it required many years of steady practise and that her life must be filled with music--music alone--if she ever hoped to graduate from the Inst.i.tute, she abandoned the idea and aspired to literature.
So from one ambition to another, her almost too active mind veered; but her wise guardians allowed it free scope, believing that, soon or late, it would find the right direction and that for which nature had really fitted her. The greatest disappointment the postman had felt, concerning these various experiments, was about the music. He was almost pa.s.sionately fond of it, and rarely pa.s.sed even a street organ without a brief pause to listen. Except, of course, when he had been upon his rounds. Then he forced himself past the alluring thing, even if he had himself to whistle to keep it out of mind. This habit of his had gained for him the nickname, along his beat, of the "whistling postman"; and, had he known it, there were many regrets among those who had responded to his whistle as promptly as to his ring of the bell that they should hear the cheerful sound no more.
The news of his collapse had quickly spread, for a new postman was already on his route, and it was only at Bellevieu, where "Johnnie"
would be most missed, that it was not known.
The eagle-gate was shut. Ephraim was not to drive his fat horses through it that morning, nor for many more to come. During the night Mrs. Cecil had been taken ill with one of her periodical bronchial attacks, of which she made so light, but her physician and old Dinah so much. To them her life seemed invaluable; for they, better than anybody else, knew of her wide-spread yet half-hidden charities, and they would keep her safely in her room, as long as this were possible.
After a time, the invalid would take matters into her own hands and return to her beloved piazza; for she was the only one not frightened by her own condition, and was wont to declare:
"I shall live just as long, and have just as many aches, as the dear Lord decrees. When He"s through with me here He"ll let me know, and all your fussing, Dinah, won"t avail. My father was ninety, my mother ninety-seven when they died. We"re tough old Maryland stock, not easily killed."
Indeed, frail though Mrs. Cecil looked, it was the fragility of extreme slenderness rather than health; and it was another pride of Dinah"s that her Miss Betty had still almost the figure of a girl. Occasionally, even yet, the lady would sit to read with a board strapped across her shoulders, as she had been used when in her teens, to keep them erect; and it was her boast that she had kept her "fine shape" simply because never, in all her life, had she suffered whalebone or corset to interfere with nature.
This Sat.u.r.day morning, therefore, a colored boy waited beneath the eagles, to receive his mistress"s mail and to prevent the ringing of the gate-bell, which might disturb her. In pa.s.sing him, on her way home, Dorothy noticed the unusual circ.u.mstance and thought how much the gossip-loving dame would miss her ever-welcome "Johnnie." But she was now most fully engrossed by her own affairs and did not stop to enlighten him.
After leaving the hospital, Mrs. Chester and she had gone downtown to replace the shoes and stockings so recklessly discarded the day before; Dorothy hobbling along in the felt slippers and declaring that she would suffer less if she were barefooted. But her mother had answered:
"No, indeed! I"d be ashamed to be seen with such a big girl as you in that condition. Besides, I must get some new things for John. So, while I select the nightshirts and wrapper he needs, you go into the shoe department and buy for yourself."
"Oh, mother! May I? I never bought any of my clothes alone. How nice and grown-up I feel! May I get just what I like?"
"Yes. Only, at the outside, you must not pay more than two dollars for the shoes, nor above a quarter for the stockings. I could scold you for spoiling your old ones, if I were not too thankful about your father to scold anybody."
So they parted by the elevator in the great store, and with even more than her native enthusiasm Dorothy plunged into these new delights of shopping. The clerk first displayed a substantial line of black shoes, as seemed most suitable to a young girl in the plainest of gingham frocks; but the small customer would have none of these. Said she:
"No, I don"t like that kind. Please show me the very prettiest ties you have for two dollars a pair," and she nodded her head suggestively toward a gla.s.s case wherein were displayed dainty slippers of varying hues. There were also white ones among them, and Dorothy remembered that her chum, Mabel Bruce, had appeared at Sunday school the week before, wearing such, and had looked "too lovely for words." But then, of course, Mabel"s frock and hat were also white and her father was the plumber. When Dorothy had narrated the circ.u.mstance to father John, and had sighed that she was "just suffering for white shoes," he had laughed and declared that:
"Plumbers were the only men rich enough to keep their daughters shod that way!"
But she saw now that he was mistaken. These beauties which the rather supercilious clerk was showing her didn"t cost a cent more than the limit she had been allowed. Indeed, they were even less. They were marked a "special sale," only one dollar ninety-seven cents. Why, she was saving three whole cents by taking them, as well as pleasing herself.
The transaction was swiftly closed. White stockings were added to the purchase, on which, also, the shopper saved another two cents, so that she felt almost a millionaire as she stepped out of the shoe department and around to the elevator door, where she was to meet her mother. The lady promptly arrived but had not finished her own errands; nor, in the crowd, could she see her daughter"s feet and the manner of their clothing. She simply held out her front-door key to the girl and bade her hurry home, to put the little house in order for the coming Sabbath.
Thus Dorothy"s fear that her mother might disapprove her choice was allayed for the time being. She would not be sent back to that clerk, who had jested about the felt slippers in a manner the young shopper felt was quite ill-bred, to ask him to exchange the white shoes for black ones. So she stepped briskly forth, keeping her own gaze fixed admiringly upon the snowy tips which peeped out from beneath her short skirts, and for a time all went well. She managed to avoid collision with the bargain-morning shoppers all about her and she wholly failed to see the amused faces of those who watched her.
On the whole, Dorothy C. was as sensible a girl as she was a bright one; but there"s n.o.body perfect, and she was rather unduly vain of her shapely hands and feet. They were exceedingly small and well-formed, and though the hands had not been spared in doing the rough tasks of life, which fall to the lot of humble bread-earners, her father John had insisted that his child"s feet should be well cared for. He, more than Martha, had seen in their adopted daughter traces of more aristocratic origin than their own; and he had never forgotten the possibility that sometime she might be reclaimed.
Usually Dorothy walked home from any downtown trip, to market or otherwise, and set out briskly to do so now. But, all at once, a horrible pain started in the toes of her right foot! She shook the toes, angrily, as if they were to blame for the condition of things; and thus resting all her weight upon her left foot that, likewise, mutinied and sent a thrill of torture through its entire length. Did white shoes always act that way?
She stopped short and addressed the misbehaving members in her sternest tones:
"What"s the matter with you to make you hurt so? Never before has a new shoe done it; I"ve just put them on and walked out of the store as comfortably as if they were old ones. Hmm! I guess it"s all imagination.
They aren"t quite, not _quite_ so big as my old ones were, but they fit ex-quis-ite-ly! Ouch!"
"Excruciatingly" would have been the better word, as Dorothy presently realized; but, also, came the happy thought that she had "saved" enough money on her purchases to pay her car-fare home. She knew that mother Martha would consider her extravagant to ride when she had no market basket to carry but--Whew! Ride she must! That pain, it began to make her feel positively ill! Also, it rendered her entrance of the car a difficult matter; so that, instead of the light spring up the step she was accustomed to give, she tottered like an old woman and was most grateful for the conductor"s help as he pulled her in. She sank into the corner seat with a look of agony on her pretty face and her aching toes thrust straight out before her, in a vain seeking for relief; nor did it add to her composure to see the glances of others in the car follow hers to the projecting feet while a smile touched more faces than one.
Poor Dorothy never forgot her first purchase, "all alone"; and her vanity received a pretty severe lesson that day. So severe that as she finally limped to the steps of No. 77 she sat down on the bottom one, unable to ascend them till she had removed her shoes. The misery which followed this act was, at first, so overpowering that she closed her eyes, the better to endure it; and when she opened them again there stood a man before her, looking at her so sharply that she was frightened; and who, when she would have risen, stopped her by a gesture and a smile that were even more alarming than his stare.
"Well, what is it?" demanded the little girl, suddenly realizing that in this broad daylight, upon an open street, n.o.body would dare to hurt her.
The stranger"s unlovely smile deepened into a gruff laughter, as he answered:
"Humph! You don"t appear to know me. But I know you. I know you better than the folks who"ve brought you up. I can help you to a great fortune if you"ll let me. Hey?"
"You--can? Oh! how!" cried Dorothy, springing up, and in her amazement at this statement forgetting her aching feet. "A fortune!" And that was the very thing that father John now needed.
CHAPTER V
DOROTHY ENTERTAINS
Dorothy"s punishment for her unwise purchase was to wear the white shoes continually. This was only possible by slitting their tops in various places, which not only spoiled their beauty but was a constant "lecture"
to their wearer; who remarked:
"One thing, mother Martha, I"ve learned by "shopping"--the vanity of vanity! I"ve always longed for pretty things, but--call _them_ pretty?
Doesn"t matter though, does it? if we"re really going to move and everything to be so changed. When we live in the country may I have all the flowers I want?"
"Yes," answered the matron, absently. Although this was Sunday, a day on which she faithfully tried to keep her mind free from weekday cares, she could not banish them now. Instead of going to church she was to visit the hospital and spend the morning with her husband. Dorothy was to attend Sunday school, as usual, wearing the slitted shoes, for the simple reason that she now possessed no others. Afterward, she might invite Mabel Bruce to stay with her, and they were to keep house till its mistress"s return.
"I hope you"ll have a very happy day, dear. After I leave John, though I shall stay with him as long as I am allowed, I must go to see Aunt Chloe. There"ll be no time for visits during the week, and besides, she"ll want to hear about everything at first hand. Poor old creature!
It"ll be hard for her to part with her "boy" and I mustn"t neglect her.