"Barefooted!" cried Jane.
"I"ll get into slippers quick enough, and I always wear stockings in bed. It"s one of my peculiar ways. I"m very peculiar." She was running out of the room. Jane followed, astonished at the strength and steadiness of the bedridden.
"But I thought that--that you were always in bed," she stammered.
Susan stopped short and turned about. "It was the pleasantest way to get along," she said briefly. "I guess that you"ve a really kind heart, so I"ll trust you and tell you the truth. Matilda wasn"t here very long before I see that if her patience wasn"t to give out, I"d got to begin to fail. I went to bed, and I"ve failed ever since. I"ve failed steady.
It"s been the only thing to do. It wasn"t easy, but it was that or have things a lot harder. So I failed."
Jane stared in amazement, and then suddenly the fun of it all overcame her, and she burst out laughing. Susan laughed, too. "It was all I could do," she repeated over and over.
"And so you failed," said her niece, still laughing.
"Yes, and so I failed."
"Mercy on us, it"s the funniest thing I ever heard in all my life,"
exclaimed the Sunshine Nurse.
"It ain"t always been funny for me," said Susan, "but come, now, I want to show you my room."
She opened a door as she spoke and led the way into a dark, musty-smelling place. It was the work of only a minute to draw the blind and throw up the window. "Right after we"ve had breakfast, we"ll clean it," the aunt declared, "and then I"ll move right back in. Husband and me had this room for twenty long years together. He was a saving man, and most of what he was intending to save when I wanted to buy things was told me in this room. Whatever I wanted he always said I could have, and then when it came night, he said I couldn"t. The room is full of memories for me--sad memories--but after he was mercifully s.n.a.t.c.hed to everlasting blessedness, I grew fond of it. It"s a nice room."
"I think I"ll get your tea," said Jane, "and then I"ll clean this room and help you move into it. We"ll have you all settled before noon."
She turned and ran down to the kitchen. The kettle was singing, and she stuffed more wood in under it and began to hunt for a tray and the other concomitants of an up-stairs breakfast. Things were not easily found.
"Well, I declare!" a voice at the window behind her exclaimed, as she was down on her knees getting a tray-cloth out of a lower drawer. The voice gave her a violent start, being a man"s. She sprang to her feet and faced about.
"I"m sorry; I thought you"d know me." It was the artist of the day before, the young man who had come down in the stage.
"It"s so early." She went to the window and shook hands. "But I"m glad to see you, anyhow."
"I always get up at six and walk five miles before breakfast when I"m in the country," he explained.
"Do you really? What enterprise!"
"And so this is where you"ve come. Why, it"s the quaintest old place that I ever saw. A regular tangle of picturesque possibilities. Who are you visiting?"
"I"m taking care of my invalid aunt while my other aunt has a little rest."
"Is she very ill?"
"Oh, no. But this is her tea that I"m making, and I must take it up to her now."
"I"ll go, then. But may I come again--and sketch?"
"I can"t have company. I"ll be too busy."
"Can"t I help with the work?"
He was so pleasant and jolly that she couldn"t help laughing. "I"m afraid not," she said, shaking her head.
He stood with his hand on the window-sash. "Do you know my name?" he asked.
"No."
"It"s Lorenzo, Lorenzo Rath. I"ve to grow famous with that name. Think of it."
She laughed again.
"I can draw the outside of the house, anyhow--can"t I?"
"Dear me, I suppose so,"--she picked up the tray,--"you must go now, though. Good-by."
"Good-by," he cried after her.
"Oh, see the steam," was Susan"s exultant exclamation, as she entered her room. "I ain"t seen steam coming out of a teapot"s nose for upwards of three years. Matilda just couldn"t seem to stand my taking my tea hot, and she"s my only sister, and I humor her. Who was you talking to?"
"A man who came down on the stage yesterday. He was out walking and didn"t know that I lived here."
"Oh, a love affair!" cried Susan, in high-keyed ecstasy. "He"s fallen in love with you, and like enough was prowling around all night. Oh! How interesting! I ain"t seen a love affair close to for years." She was so genuinely joyful that Jane felt sorry to dampen the enthusiasm.
"I don"t believe you"ll see one now," she said, smiling good-humoredly.
"You see, I don"t mean to marry, Auntie. I"m a Sunshine Nurse, and they have their hands too full for that kind of thing."
"A nurse! I didn"t know you were a nurse."
"A Sunshine Nurse is a person who does what doctors can"t always do,--who makes folk well."
"Are you going to make me well?"
"Yes," said Jane, resolutely.
Susan stopped eating and looked at her with an expression full of contradictory feelings. "I shall like it," she said slowly. "But, oh my!
Matilda won"t. Why, she--" she paused. "Oh, I _do_ wonder if I can trust you?"
"Anybody can trust me," said Jane. "It"s part of my training to be honest."
"Dear me, but that"s a good idea," said Susan, with sincerest approval.
"Well, if I can trust you, I don"t mind telling you that it"s taken considerable care for me to live along with Matilda. I don"t mean anything against her--not rat-poison nor anything like that, you know?--but she hasn"t just approved of my living; she"s looked upon it as a waste of her time. And I"ve had to manage pretty careful in consequence. You see, she"s my only sister, and she"d have my property anyhow, but if I had to have a nurse or a woman to look out for me long, there"d be no property to leave. She"s real sensible, and we both know just how it is, but it"s been pleasantest for me to stay more and more in bed and kind of catch at things as I walk, and once in a while I don"t eat all day, and so it keeps up her hope and keeps things pleasant."
Jane looked paralyzed. "How can you go without food all day?"
Susan considered a little. Then she took a big drink of hot tea and confessed. "I don"t really. I watch till she goes to the garden, and then I skip down-stairs and make a good meal and lay it all on the cat."
Jane sank down on the foot of the bed and burst out laughing again.
Again she just couldn"t help it. Susan laughed, too; first softly and gingerly, then in a way almost as hearty as her niece"s.
"Oh me, oh my," the latter declared, after a minute, wiping her eyes.