Part 8 (2/2)

”Yes, sir,” replied Wilson.

”By the bye,” continued Mr. Huntingdon, feebly, ”some one told me just now about a youth who had done me a good turn in the matter. Did you hear his name, Wilson?”

”Yes, papa,” interrupted Nea, eagerly; ”it was Mr. Trafford, one of the junior clerks, and he is down-stairs in the library, waiting for the doctor to dress his shoulder.”

Nea would have said more, for her heart was full of grat.i.tude to the heroic young stranger; but her father held up his hand deprecatingly, and she noticed that his face was very pale.

”That will do, my dear. You speak too fast, and my poor head is still painful and confused;” and as Nea looked distressed at her thoughtlessness, he continued, kindly, ”Never mind, Doctor Ainslie says I shall be all right soon--he is going to send me a nurse.

Trafford, you say; that must be Maurice Trafford, a mere junior. Let me see, what did Dobson say about him?” and Mr. Huntingdon lay and pondered with that hard set face of his, until he had mastered the facts that had escaped his memory.

”Ah, yes, the youngest clerk but one in the office; a curate's son from Birmingham, an orphan--no mother--and drawing a salary of seventy pounds a year. Dobson told me about him; a nice, gentlemanly lad; works well--he seems to have taken a fancy to him. He is an old fool, is Dobson, and full of vagaries, but a thoroughly good man of business. He said Trafford was a fellow to be trusted, and would make a good clerk by and by. Humph, a rise will not hurt him. One can not give a diamond ring to a boy like that. I will tell Dobson to-morrow to raise Trafford's salary to a hundred a year.”

”Papa!” burst from Nea's lips as she overheard this muttered soliloquy, but, as she remembered the doctor's advice, she prudently remained quiet; but if any one could have read her thoughts at that moment, could have known the oppression of grat.i.tude in the heart of the agitated girl toward the stranger who had just saved her father from a horrible death, and whose presence of mind and self-forgetfulness were to be repaid by the paltry sum of thirty pounds a year! ”Papa!” she exclaimed, and then in her forbearance kept quiet.

”Ah, Nea, are you there still?” observed her father in some surprise; ”I do not want to keep you a prisoner, my child. Wilson can sit by me while I sleep, for I must not be disturbed after I have taken the composing draught Dr. Ainslie ordered. Go out for a drive and amuse yourself; and, wait a moment, Nea, perhaps you had better say a civil word or two to young Trafford, and see if Mrs. Thorpe has attended to him. He shall hear from me officially tomorrow; yes,” muttered Mr.

Huntingdon, as his daughter left the room, ”a hundred a year is an ample allowance for a junior, more than that would be ill-advised and lead to presumption.”

Maurice Trafford was in the library trying to forget the pain of his injured arm, which was beginning to revenge itself for that moment's terrible strain.

The afternoon's shadows lay on the garden of the square, the children were playing under the acacia trees, the house-martins still circled and wavered in the sunlight.

Through the open window came the soft spring breezes and the distant hum of young voices; within was warmth, silence, and the perfume of violets.

Maurice closed his drowsy eyes with a delicious sense of luxurious forgetfulness, and then opened them with a start; for some one had gently called him by his name, and for a moment he thought it was still his dream, for standing at the foot of the couch was a girl as beautiful as any vision, who held out her hand to him, and said in the sweetest voice he had ever heard:

”Mr. Trafford, you have saved my father's life. I shall be grateful to you all my life.”

Maurice was almost dizzy as he stood up and looked at the girl's earnest face and eyes br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with tears, and the sunlight and the violets and the children's voices seemed all confused; and as he took her offered hand a strange shyness kept him silent.

”I have heard all about it,” she went on. ”I know, while others stood by too terrified to move, you risked your own life to protect my father--that you stood between him and death while they dragged him out from the horses' feet. It was n.o.ble--heroic;” and here Nea clasped her hands, and the tears ran down her cheeks.

Poor impetuous child; these were hardly the cold words of civility that her pompous father had dictated, and were to supplement the thirty pounds per annum, ”officially delivered.” Surely, as she looked at the young man in his shabby coat, she must have remembered that it was only Maurice Trafford the junior clerk--the drudge of a mercantile house.

Nea owned afterward that she had forgotten everything; in after years she confessed that Maurice's grave young face came upon her like a revelation.

She had admirers by the score--the handsome, weak-minded Lord Bertie among them--but never had she seen such a face as Maurice Trafford's, the poor curate's son.

Maurice's pale face flushed up under the girl's enthusiastic praise, but he answered, very quietly:

”I did very little, Miss Huntingdon; any one could have done as much.

How could I stand by and see your father's danger, and not go to his help?” and then, as the intolerable pain in his arm brought back the faintness, he asked her permission to reseat himself. ”He would go home,” he said, wearily, ”and then he need trouble no one.”

Nea's heart was full of pity for him. She could not bear the thought of his going back to his lonely lodgings, with no one to take care of him, but there was no help for it. So Mrs. Thorpe was summoned with her remedies, and the carriage was ordered. When it came round Maurice looked up in his young hostess's face with his honest gray eyes and frank smile and said good-bye. And the smile and the gray eyes, and the touch of the thin, boyish hand, were never to pa.s.s out of Nea's memory from that day.

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