Part 16 (1/2)
Brady frowned. ”I don't like it,” he said. ”She's too pretty, with those little curly rings of hair round her pale face, and with those big blue eyes. Why don't they send some old maid on such errands?”
”Because they want to sell their papers,” answered Miss Standish, dryly.
The talk around the fire had gone on so eagerly that the attention of the group was utterly absorbed; and every one started as if an apparition had appeared in their midst, when a slim figure in a dark dress, against which her face looked doubly white, glided noiselessly into the room. With eyes fixed in almost trance-like far-sightedness, she moved towards Brady, and laid her hand upon his sleeve.
”My brother,” she said, ”it is you have risked your life to save mine.
G.o.d gave you back both. What will you be doing with your share?”
”I--I--I'm awfully sorry, don't you know!” stammered Brady, terribly embarra.s.sed; ”but it wasn't I who did it.”
”Here is the man, Miss Costello, to whom you owe your life,” said the Doctor, who dearly loved a ”situation,” turning as he spoke, with a little flourish, to the place where Flint had stood; but that gentleman had taken advantage of the mistake to bolt into the bed-room behind him. He would have bolted into the pond, rather than submit to be thanked publicly in this fas.h.i.+on.
”He's gone!” exclaimed Dr. Cricket, in disappointment.
”Ah!” said Nora Costello, with a quick, sympathetic smile, ”it's verra natural. He did not wish to be thanked. Perhaps he is right. After all, it is to the good G.o.d himsel' that our thanks are owing.”
She knelt on the rug, as simply as she would have taken an offered chair, and spoke to some invisible presence, as naturally as she would have spoken to any of those in the room. Brady was shocked at first, at the conversational tone. It was so realistic that he opened his eyes, half expecting to see the Someone--the Something--so evidently apparent to the girl herself.
Having once opened his eyes, he forgot to close them again. The actual so pursued him, that he ceased to seek the spiritual presence. The firelight, playing over the girl's face, threw strange lights, and shadows half unearthly. She seemed a spirit, of whom no ordinary restraints of the familiar social life were to be expected.
When her prayer was finished, she rose as simply as she had knelt, though now two large tears stood on the long fringe of her eyes.
”Good-night, friends!” she said with a confiding glance around. ”I think I shall be able to get the sleep now. G.o.d bless you all!”
When she was gone, the hush was unbroken for several minutes. At last Winifred spoke.
”I don't know how the rest of you feel, but somehow I have a sensation of being a lay figure in the shop-window of life, and having all of a sudden seen a real woman go by.”
”Jove! what eyes she has!” said Brady, continuing thoughts of his own, rather than answering Winifred's speech.
”Really,” said Ben Bradford, ”it wasn't unpleasant at all.”
”Unpleasant!” exclaimed his aunt. ”Well, I should say not, unless heaven is unpleasant, and angels, and the Judgment Day, which I daresay it will be for you, Ben Bradford, unless you mend your ways.
Good-night! I'm going up to see that the child has a hot-water bag to her feet, and a mustard plaster on her chest. The Salvation Army needs an efficient ambulance corps.”
”Hm!” said Dr. Cricket, as Miss Standish disappeared. ”Mary may have chosen the better part; but I pity the household that's all Marys.
Give me a Martha in mine every time!
”That reminds me,” he added briskly, ”that I must look after my patient, and not let him pitch himself into that bed, which has not been aired for a week; and n.o.body in this house knows the difference between damp sheets and dry ones. Do you know, Mr. Brady,” he continued, as he rose from his chair with a little rheumatic hitch, ”I have taken a great s.h.i.+ne to that queer friend of yours. I don't know how it is, but I suspect it is because he is such a contrast to most folks. It's a comfort to meet a man who keeps his best foot back.”
”Oh, Flint is a brick!” said Brady, with enthusiasm. ”I have known him to do the nicest things. There was a fellow once in college--he was rather pus.h.i.+ng socially, and n.o.body liked him--but he was 'a dig,'”
and he got sick from studying too much. None of the rest of us ever fell ill of that trouble; but he did, and he was so poor he didn't want to let any one know about it, for fear he would be obliged to send for a doctor. It was found out though; and one day a doctor and nurse turned up at the fellow's room,--said they'd been asked not to say who sent them; but they stayed and pulled him through. He never knew who his benefactor was; but I did, and you may judge of my surprise, when the fellow got about, to see Flint cut him on the street.
”'What in thunder did you do that for?' I asked, for I was dumfounded to see him do it.
”'Because the fellow is a cad, and would be taking all sorts of advantages. Better ignore the acquaintance at the start.'