Part 1 (1/2)
Mavis of Green Hill.
by Faith Baldwin.
CHAPTER I
GREEN HILL, June
A new doctor has arrived in Green Hill!
Sarah told me so this morning when she brought in my breakfast. She set the tray down with an agitated thump, and after her strong arms had raised me a little higher among the pillows, she stepped back, folded her hands beneath her ap.r.o.n, and fixed me with a portentous eye.
”Now do try and relish your breakfast, Miss Mavis,” she coaxed, ”there's a good girl!”
An undercurrent of excitement colored her tone. I looked upon her with suspicion. But I know my Sarah. Like Fate, and the village fire-company, she is not to be hurried. Very casually, I reached for my gla.s.s of milk. Years of lying comparatively flat on a useless back tend to the development of patience as a necessity.
”What time is it?” I inquired conversationally.
”Past nine.”
I set the gla.s.s aside, and bit reflectively into a crisp triangle of toast. Since I've become so clever at eating and drinking, there's a sense of adventure about these commonplace functions which no whole person could ever comprehend. Sarah, busying herself with details of window-shades and counterpanes, watching me meanwhile from the corner of her eye, waited until I had turned indifferently to my pillows again, before making the following terse but thrilling remark.
”Your pink rose-bush's come into blossom, Miss Mavis.”
Here was news indeed! My unconcern took unto itself wings and flew away.
”Not really!” I cried, ”Oh, Sarah, how perfectly darling of her to waken so early!”
Sarah, accustomed to my extravagant fas.h.i.+on of endowing all growing things with distinct personalities, nodded gravely. And then, with all the majesty of Jove--if one may picture that deity as female, fifty, and New England incarnate--she launched her thunderbolt of Green Hill gossip.
”That young doctor--him that was to come from the city to help Doctor McAllister with his patien's--he's here!”
There was more truth than enunciation in Sarah's neglect of that final ”t” in patients. Our village doctor is long on wisdom, but short of temper. I reached out for the morning paper, lying on my bedside table, and rustled it in dismissal.
”How interesting!” I murmured, successfully concealing any concern at all.
Sarah swooped down upon my tray and bore it to the door, in a manner which carried conviction. But we can deceive each other so little, Sarah and I.
”Come last night,” she volunteered, ”from New York. And every girl in Green Hill is furbis.h.i.+ng up her Sunday clothes, so Sammy said.”
Sammy, surnamed Simpson, the freckled-faced Mercury who delivers the milk, and is in close touch with all the divers heart-throbs of Green Hill, holds a sentimental, if unacknowledged appeal for Sarah. A century or two ago, Sammy's father, in those days a gay and unenc.u.mbered spark, courted my Sarah, so runs the story, in the public manner of Green Hill. And Sarah, difficult to believe though it be, showed him no disfavor. There was, however, an obstacle to eventual union, in the person of Sarah's invalid mother, a querulous, ninety-pound tyrant. Upon this rock the frail bark of the Simpson affections shattered. This is of history, the most ancient, but had the far-reaching result that Sarah, whose lot seems ever cast among the stricken, now waits on me heart, hand, and foot, while over the Simpson hearthstone another G.o.ddess presides, and rigidly too, if one can judge from the harra.s.sed expressions of Sammy, Sr., Sammy, Jr., and all the other innumerable Simpson olive branches.
But to return to our muttons--the palpitating girlhood of Green Hill.
”Silly geese!” I commented unkindly.
Sarah from the doorway looked as cryptic as is consistent with the features Nature had given her.
”Oh, I don't know!” she answered with spirit, and an unconscious effect of argot, ”In Green Hill, Miss Mavis, men is scarce!”
Here was truth! Mentally I echoed, ”They is!” and Sarah, reading ratification in my silence, achieved a disappearance of my tray, and returned to the attack.