"How good you are!" exclaimed Imogen, as Clover bent over for a good-night kiss. She put her arms round Clover"s neck and held her tight for a moment.
"Yes, indeed," she sighed. "I don"t deserve it after my bad behavior, but I shall be only too glad if I may be your friend. I don"t believe any other girl in the world has two so good as you and Isabel."
"Don"t lie awake to think over our perfections," said Clover, as she withdrew with the candle. "Go to sleep, and remember that you are coming down to the Hut with me for a visit, whenever I go."
Dr. Hope, however, negatived this suggestion decidedly. He was an autocrat with his sick people, and no one dared dispute his decisions.
"What your young woman needs is to get away from the Valley for a while into lower air; and what you need is to have her go, and forget that you have been nursing her," he told Clover. "There is a look of tension about you both which is not the correct thing. She"ll improve much faster at St. Helen"s than here, and besides, I want her under my eye for a while. Mary shall send up an invitation to-morrow, and mind that you make her accept it."
So the next day came the most cordial of notes from Mrs. Hope, asking Imogen to spend a fortnight with her.
"Dr. Hope wishes to consider you his patient a little longer," she wrote, "and says the lower level will do you good; and I want you as much as he does for other reasons. St. Helen"s is rather empty just now, in this betwixt-and-between season, and a visitor will be a real G.o.d-send to me. I am so afraid that you will be disobliging, and say "No," that I have made the doctor put it in the form of a prescription; and please tell Clover that we count upon her to see that you begin to take the remedy without delay."
And sure enough, on the doctor"s prescription paper, with the regular appeal to Jupiter which heads all prescriptions, a formula was enclosed setting forth with due professional precision that Miss Imogen Young was to be put in a carryall, "well shaken" on the way down, and taken in fourteen daily doses in the town of St. Helen"s. "Immediate."
"How very good of them!" said Imogen. "Everybody is so wonderfully good to me! I think America must be the kindest country in the world!"
She made no difficulty about accepting the invitation, and resigned herself to the will of her friends with a docility that was astonishing to everybody except Clover, who was in the secret of her new-born resolves. They packed her things at once, and Lionel drove her down to St. Helen"s the very day after the reception of Mrs. Hope"s note. Imogen parted from the sisters with a warm embrace, but she clung longest to Clover.
"You will let me come for a night or two when I return, before I settle again at home, won"t you?" she said. "I shall be half-starved to see you, and a mile is a goodish bit to get over when you"re not strong."
"Why, of course," said Clover, delighted. "We shall count on it, and Lion has promised to stay with us all the time you are away."
"I do think that girl has experienced a change of heart," remarked Elsie, as they turned to go in-doors. "She seems really fond of you, and almost fond of me. It is no wonder, I am sure, so far as you are concerned, after all you have done for her. I never supposed she could look so pretty or come so near being agreeable as she does now.
Evidently mountain-fever is what the English emigrant of the higher cla.s.ses needs to thaw him out and attune him to American ways. It"s a pity they can"t all be inoculated with it on landing.
"Now, Clovy,--my dear, sweet old Clovy,--what fun it is to have you at home again!" she went on, giving her sister a rapturous embrace. "I wouldn"t mention it so long as you had to be away, but I have missed you horribly. "There"s no luck about the house" when you are not in it. We have all been out of sorts,--Geoff quite down in the mouth, little Geoff not at all contented with me as a mother; even Euphane has worn a long face and exhibited a tendency to revert to the Isle of Man, which she never showed so long as you were to the fore. As for me, I have felt like a person with one lung, or half a head,--all broken up, and unlike myself. Oh, dear! how good it is to get you back, and be able to consult you and look at you! Come upstairs at once, and unpack your things, and we will play that you have never been away, and that the last month is nothing but a disagreeable dream from which we have waked up."
"It _is_ delightful to get back," admitted Clover; "still the month has had its nice side, too. Imogen is so sweet and grateful and demonstrative that it would astonish you. She is like a different girl.
I really think she has grown to love me."
"I should say that nothing was more probable. But don"t let"s talk of Imogen now. I want you all to myself."
The day had an ending as happy as unexpected. This was the letter that Lionel Young brought back that evening from Johnnie at Burnet:--
DEAREST SISTERS,--What do you think has happened?
Something as enchanting as it is surprising! I wrote you about Dorry"s having the grippe; but I would not tell you what a serious affair it was, because you were all so anxious and occupied about Miss Young that I did not like to add to your worries more than I could help. He was pretty ill for nearly a week; and though on the mend now, he is much weakened and run down, and papa, I can see, considers him still in a poor way. There is no chance of his being able to go back to the works for a couple of months yet, and we were casting about as to the best way of giving him a change of air, when, last night, came a note from Mr. Dayton to say that he has to take a business run to Salt Lake, with a couple of his directors, and there are two places in car 47 at our service if any of us still care to make the trip to Colorado, late as it is. We had to answer at once, and we took only ten minutes to make up our minds.
Dorry and I are to start for Chicago to-morrow, and will be with you on Thursday if all goes well,--and for a good long visit, as the company have given Dorry a two months" vacation. We shall come back like common folks at our own charges, which is an unusual extravagance for the Carr family; but papa says sickness is a valid reason for spending money, while mere pleasure isn"t. He thinks the journey will be the very thing for Dorry. It has all come so suddenly that I am quite bewildered in my mind. I don"t at all like going away and leaving papa alone; but he is quite decided about it, and there is just the bare chance that Katy may run out for a week or two, so I am going to put my scruples in my pocket, and take the good the G.o.ds provide, prepared to be very happy. How perfectly charming it will be to see you all! Somehow I never pined for you and the valley so much as I have of late. It was really an awful blow when the August plan came to nothing, but Fate is making amends. Thursday! only think of it! You will just have time to put towels in our rooms and fill the pitchers before we are there. I speak for the west corner one in the guest cabin, which I had last year. Our dear love to you all.
Your affectionate JOHNNIE.
P.S. Please tell Mr. Young how happy we are that his sister is recovering.
"This is too delicious!" said Elsie, when she had finished reading this letter. "Dorry, who never has been here, and John, and for October, when we so rarely have anybody! I think it is a sort of "reward of merit" for you, Clover, for taking such good care of Imogen Young."
"It"s a most delightful one if it is. I half wish now that we hadn"t asked Lion to stay while his sister is gone. He"s a dear good fellow, but it would be nicer to have the others quite to ourselves, don"t you think so?"
"Clover dear," said Elsie, looking very wise and significant, "did it never occur to you that there might be a little something like a sentiment or tenderness between John and Lionel? Are you sure that she would be so thoroughly pleased if we sent him off and kept her to ourselves?"
"Certainly not. I never thought of such a thing."
"You never _do_ think of such things. I am much sharper about them than you are, and I have observed a tendency on the part of Miss John to send messages to that young man in her letters, and always in postscripts. Mark that, _postscripts_! There is something very suspicious in postscripts, and he invariably blushes immensely when I deliver them."
"You are a great deal too sharp," responded Clover, laughing. "You see through millstones that don"t exist. It would be very nice if it were so, but it isn"t. I don"t believe a word about your postscripts and blushes; you"ve imagined it all."
"Some people are born stupid in these directions," retorted Elsie. "I"ll bet you Phillida"s back-hair against the first tooth that Geoffy loses that I am right."
CHAPTER IX.
THE ECHOES IN THE EAST CANYON.
LIONEL certainly did redden when Johnnie"s message was delivered to him.
The quick-eyed Elsie noted it and darted a look at Clover, but Clover only shook her head slightly in return. Each sister adhered to her own opinion.
They were very desirous that the High Valley should make a favorable impression on Dorry, for it was his first visit to them. The others had all been there except Katy, and she had seen Cheyenne and St. Helen"s, but to Dorry everything west of the Mississippi was absolutely new. He was a very busy person in these days, and quite the success of the Carr family in a moneyed point of view. The turn for mechanics which he exhibited in boyhood had continued, and determined his career.
Electrical science had attracted his attention in its earlier, half-developed stages; he had made a careful study of it, and qualified himself for the important position which he held under the company, which was fast revolutionizing the lighting and street-car system of Burnet, now growing to be a large manufacturing centre. This was doing well for a young fellow not quite twenty-five, and his family were very proud of him. He was too valuable to his employers to be easily spared, and except for the enforced leisure of the grippe it might probably have been years before he felt free to make his sisters in Colorado a visit, in which case nothing would have happened that did happen.
"Dear, steady old Sobersides!" said Elsie, as she spread a fresh cover over the shelf which did duty for a bureau in the Bachelors" Room; "I wonder what he will think of it all. I"m afraid he will be scandalized at our scrambling ways, and our having no regular church, and consider us a set of half-heathen Bohemians."
"I don"t believe it. Dorry has too much good sense, and has seen too much of the world among business men to be easily shocked. And our little Sunday service is very nice, I think; Geoff reads so reverently,--and for sermons, we have our pick of the best there are."
"I know, and I like them dearly myself; but I seem to feel that Dorry will miss the pulpit and sitting in a regular pew. He"s rather that sort of person, don"t you think?"
"You are too much inclined to laugh at Dorry," said Clover, reprovingly, "and he doesn"t deserve it of you. He"s a thoroughly good, sensible fellow, and has excellent abilities, papa says,--not brilliant, but very sound. I don"t like to have you speak so of him."
"Why, Clovy--my little Clovy, I almost believe you are scolding me! Let me look at you,--yes, there"s quite a frown on your forehead, and your mouth has the firm look of grandpapa Carr"s daguerreotype. I"ll be good,--really I will. Don"t fire again,--I"ve "come down" like the c.o.o.n in the anecdote. Dorry"s a dear, and you are another, and I"m ever so glad he"s coming; but really, it"s not in human nature not to laugh at the one solemn person in a frivolous family like ours, now is it?"
"See that you behave yourself, then, and I"ll not scold you any more,"
replied Clover, magisterially, and ignoring the last question. She marred the effect of her lecture by kissing Elsie as she spoke; but it was hard to resist the temptation, Elsie was so droll and coaxing, and so very pretty.
They expected to find Dorry still something of an invalid, and made preparations accordingly; but there was no sign of debility in his jump from the carriage or his run up the steps to greet them. He was a little thinner than usual, but otherwise seemed quite himself.
"It"s the air," explained Johnnie, "this blessed Western air! He was forlorn when we left Burnet, and _so_ tired when we got to Chicago; but after that he improved with every mile, and when we reached Denver this morning he seemed fresher than when we started. I do think Colorado air the true elixir of life."
"It is quite true, what she says. I feel like a different man already,"
added Dorry. "Clover, you look a little pulled down yourself. Was it nursing Miss What"s-her-name?"
"I"m all right. Another day or two will quite rest me. I came home only day before yesterday, you see. How delicious it is to have you both here! Dorry dear, you must have some beef-tea directly,--Euphane has a little basin of it ready,--and dinner will be in about an hour."
"Beef-tea! What for? I don"t need anything of the sort, I a.s.sure you.
Roast mutton, which I seem to smell in the distance, is much more in my line. I want to look about and see your house. What do you call that snow-peak over there? This is a beautiful place of yours, I declare."
"Papa would open his eyes if he could see him," remarked Johnnie, confidentially, when she got her sisters to herself a little later.
"It"s like a miracle the way he has come up. He was so dragged and miserable and so _very_ cross only three days ago. Now, you dear things, let me look at you both. Are you quite well? How are the brothers-in-law? Where are the babies, and what have you done with Miss Young?"