Part 24 (2/2)
”Of course,” said Jeff, ”I'll go, since there's n.o.body else. How am I to know 'em? Young man and sick girl? All right, that's easy,” and he was off to catch a car at the corner.
As he rode into town, however, he was rebelling against the situation.
”This guest business is being overdone,” he observed to himself. ”These people are probably some more off the Peyton piece of cloth. An invalid girl lying round on couches for Fiddle to wait on--another Lucy, probably, only worse, because she's ill. Well, I'm not going to be any more cordial than the law calls for. I'll have to bring 'em out in a carriage, I suppose. She'll be too limp for the trolley.”
He reached the station barely in time to engage a carriage before the train came in. He took up his position inside the gates through which all pa.s.sengers must pa.s.s from the train-shed into the great station.
”Looking for somebody?” asked a voice at his elbow.
He glanced quickly down at one of his old schoolmates, Carolyn Houghton.
”Yes, guests of the Churchills,” he answered, his gaze instantly returning to the throng pouring toward him from the train. ”Help me, will you? I don't know them from Adam. It's a man and his invalid sister, old friends of Andy's.”
”There they are,” said Carolyn, promptly, indicating an approaching pair.
Jeff laughed. ”The sister isn't quite so antique as that,” he objected, as a little woman of fifty wavered past on the arm of a stout gentleman.
”You said 'old' friends,” retorted Carolyn. ”Look, Jeff, isn't that she?
The sister's being wheeled in a chair by a porter, the brother's walking beside her. They _look_ like Doctor Churchill's friends, Jeff.”
”Think you can tell Andy's friends by their uniform?”
”You can tell anybody's intimate friends in a crowd--I mean the same kind of people look alike,” a.s.serted Carolyn, with emphasis. ”These are the ones, I'm sure. I'll just watch while you greet them and then I'll slip off. I'm taking this next train. What a sweet face that girl has, but how delicate--like a little flower. She's a dear, I'm sure. The brother looks nice, too. They're the ones, I know. See, the brother's looking hard at us all inside the gates.”
”Here goes, then. Good-by!” Jeff turned away to the task of making himself known to the strangers. But he was forced to admit that if Charlotte must meet another onslaught of visitors, these certainly did look attractive.
”Yes, I'm Thorne Lee,” the young man answered, with a straight look into Jeff's eyes and a grasp of the outstretched hand as Jeff introduced himself. He motioned the porter to wheel the chair out of the pressing crowd.
Jeff explained about the delayed telegram. Mr. Lee presented him to the young girl in the chair, and Jeff looked down into a pair of hazel eyes which instantly claimed his sympathy, the shadows of fatigue lay on them so heavily. But Miss Evelyn Lee's smile was bright if fleeting, and she answered Jeff's announcement that he had a carriage waiting with so appreciative a word of grat.i.tude that he found his preconceived antipathy to Doctor Churchill's guests slipping away.
So presently he had them in a carriage and bowling through the streets which led toward the suburbs. Thorne Lee sat beside his sister, supporting her, and talked with Jeff. By the time they had covered the long drive to the house Jeff was hoping Lee would stay a month.
The hazel eyes of Lee's young sister had closed and the lashes lay wearily sweeping the pale cheeks as the carriage drove up.
”Are we there?” Lee asked, bending over the slight figure. ”Open your eyes, dear.”
Jeff jumped out and ran to the house. He burst in upon Charlotte and Andy. ”Your friends are here!” he shouted. ”I had to meet 'em myself.”
Doctor Churchill and Charlotte were at the door before the words were out of Jeff's mouth, and in a moment more Andy was lifting Evelyn Lee's light figure in his arms, thanking heaven inwardly as he did so for his young wife's wholesome weight. At the same moment words of of eager, cheery welcome for his old friend were on his lips:
”Thorne Lee, I'm gladder to see you than anybody in the world! Miss Evelyn, here's Mrs. Churchill. She's not an old married woman at all--she's the dearest girl in the world. She's going to seem to you like one of your schoolfellows. Charlotte, here she is; take good care of her.”
Thorne Lee stood looking on, a relieved smile on his lips as his old friend's wife took his sick little sister into her charge. It was not two minutes before he saw Evelyn, lying pale and mute on the couch, yet smiling up at Charlotte's bright young face.
Charlotte administered a cup of hot bouillon talking so engagingly meanwhile that Evelyn was beguiled into taking without protest the whole of the much-needed nourishment. Then he saw the young invalid carried off to bed, relieved of the necessity of meeting any more members of the household. He learned, as Charlotte slipped into the room after an hour's absence, that Evelyn had already dropped off to sleep. He leaned back in his chair with a long breath.
”What kind of a girl is this you've married, Andy?” he asked, with a smile and a look from one to the other. The three were alone, Mrs.
Peyton and her children having gone out to some sort of entertainment.
”Just what she seems to be,” replied Doctor Churchill, smiling back, ”and a thousand times more.”
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