Part 8 (2/2)
”She could sleep on the couch in the living-room.” suggested Max.
”_Whew!_ It _is_ hot! What possesses the weather to start in like this, before June's half over? I believe it was one hundred and twelve in the office to-day.”
He threw himself on the couch. After a moment of reclining upon it, during which he mopped his brow and drew his handkerchief about his neck, he rose and jerked the couch toward one of the two open windows. When he had lain in this new situation for the s.p.a.ce of two minutes more, he got up again and sought the tiny kitchen, where he could be heard drawing water from the tap. ”Ugh--warm as dish water!” Uncle Timothy could hear his distant splutter.
Bob and Alec were out somewhere--presumably cooling off in one of the city parks or on the river front. Also, they were getting impatiently through the hours before Sally's return. The entire Lane household had reached the point where her coming home seemed a thing never to be attained. To a man, they felt that one week more without her would be unendurable.
But the next day--it was Sunday again--she came home. Josephine and Max, with the Burnside carriage and horses, brought her to the door. Max and Alec, making a ”chair” of hands and wrists, carried the pitifully light figure up the four flights of stairs, and Josephine hovered over the convalescent as she was established upon the couch, among many pillows.
The rest of them stood about in a smiling circle.
”Oh, but it's good to be home!” sighed Sally, happily, looking from one to another with eyes which seemed to them all as big as saucers, so deep were the hollows about them and so thin her cheeks. ”But how pale and tired you all look! What in the world is the matter with you?”
”The truth is, I think, dear,” explained Josephine, glancing from Max to Uncle Timothy, ”your family have been having typhoid.” Then, at Sally's startled expression, she added, gently, ”It's almost as wearing, you know, to have a fever of anxiety over somebody you love as to have the real thing in the hospital.”
”Oh!” exclaimed Sally, softly, and her eyes fell. Then she drooped limply against her pillows. ”It's--just a little hot to-day, isn't it?”
she murmured.
Alec consulted the thermometer. ”It's ninety here now,” he announced. ”At ten o'clock in the morning! About three this afternoon, Sally, you'll see what we can do here. And no let-up promised by the weather man.”
Bob brought a palm-leaf fan, and perching himself at the head of Sally's couch, began to fan her. ”I'll produce 'breezes from the north and east,'” he promised. ”Al, why don't you get her some ice-water? We began to take ice yesterday.”
”Only yesterday?” questioned Sally, with her eyes closed. But she forbore to ask why they had delayed so long. Well she knew that illnesses are expensive affairs.
”If you only had let us take you to our house!” cried Josephine, for the tenth time since she had first proposed that plan. ”We could have made you so much more comfortable.”
Sally opened her eyes again. ”No, you couldn't, Joey,” she said, ”unless you had taken all the rest of them. I couldn't spare my family another day!”
”May we come in?”
It was Jarvis Burnside, bringing his mother to see Sally. Neither of them had yet set eyes upon her since her illness. Sally had been at home for two days now, two intemperately hot days. During this entire period she had lain on the couch, which was drawn as close to the window as it could be placed. Uncle Timothy had remained at hand with fans and iced lemonade and every other expedient he could think of for mitigating the perfervid temperature of the flat. Just now, at five o'clock in the afternoon, with no breeze whatever entering at the window, the small living-room was at its worst.
”Oh, I'm so glad to see you!” Sally held out a languid hand, but her face lighted up with pleasure.
While his mother bent over Sally, Jarvis pushed up his goggles, then pulled them off. The room was shaded, but even so, the daylight made him blink painfully for a minute. But by the time he got his chance at greeting the invalid, he was able to see clearly for himself just how Sally was looking. He stared hard at her, noting with a contraction of the heart all the evidences of the fight for life she had been through.
There was no doubt about it, it was as Josephine had said: she looked as if a breath might blow her away.
”I look like a little boy now, don't I?” suggested Sally, smiling up at him as his hand closed over hers. She put up her other hand to her head, where the heavy ma.s.ses of fair hair had given way to a short, curly crop most childish in its cl.u.s.tering framing of her now delicate face. ”It's a blow to my vanity, but it's growing fast, and by the time I can hold my head up good and strong, like a six-months-old baby, it will be long enough to tie with a bow at my neck.”
”You can't hold your head up yet?” questioned Jarvis anxiously.
”Oh, yes, I can,” declared Sally, cheerfully. ”I just don't seem to want to--not when there's a convenient pillow to lay it on. But I shall get strong pretty soon now. When the weather changes--why, even to-day, if I were lying down on the bank of a brook somewhere, or in the woods--or almost anywhere out-doors--I believe I'd feel quite a lot stiffer in my backbone.”
”And still you won't come to us and let us make you comfortable?” Mrs.
Burnside looked as if she would enjoy doing it.
But Sally looked over at Uncle Timothy, and her shake of the head was as decided as ever. ”Not while Uncle Timmy and the boys stay here. Have you seen Max and Alec lately, Mrs. Burnside? I don't believe I'm a bit paler than they are, working in those hot offices in the artificial light. I shall grow strong fast enough--the nurse told me people always feel like this after typhoid. And when I do get strong I shall be a Trojan--just wait.”
”We don't like to wait,” said Jarvis, still watching Sally, although his eyes were feeling the adverse influences of the white daylight which beat into the room underneath the shades. He put up his hand for an instant to s.h.i.+eld them, and Sally was quick to notice.
<script>