CHAPTER XXIIIA QUICK CONVALESCENCE

CHAPTER XXIIIA QUICK CONVALESCENCE

Schoolwas 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 wasalmost 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 mefeelif 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.

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