Wayside Courtships Part 25

"How yeh feelin', anyway, pardner?" said Hartley, as he brought the water.

"First rate, Jim; I guess I'll be all right."

"Well, I guess you'd better keep quiet."

Albert rose partly, a.s.sisted by his friend, and drank from the gla.s.s a moment; then fell back on his pillow.

"I don't feel s' well when I sit up."

"Well, don't, then; stay right there where you are. Oh-um!" gaped Hartley, stretching himself; "it's about time f'r breakfast, I guess.

Want y'r hands washed and y'r hair combed?"

"I guess I ain't reduced to _that_ yet."

"Well, I guess y' _be_, old man. Now keep _quiet_, or have I got t' make yeh?" he asked in a threatening tone which made Albert smile. He wondered if Hartley hadn't been sitting up most of the night; but if he had, he showed little effect of it, for he began to sing a comic song as he pulled on his boots.

He threw on his coat next, and went out into the kitchen, returning soon with some hot water, with which he began to bathe the wounded boy's face and hands as tenderly as a woman.

"There; now I guess you're in shape f'r grub--feel any like grub?--Come in," he called in answer to a knock on the door.

Mrs. Welsh entered.

"How is he?" she whispered anxiously.

"Oh, I'm all right," cried Albert. "Bring me a plate of pancakes, quick!"

Mrs. Welsh turned to Hartley with a startled expression, but Hartley's grin a.s.sured her.

"I'm glad to find you so much better," she said, going to his bedside.

"I've hardly slep', I was so much worried about you."

It was very sweet to feel her fingers in his hair, as his mother would have caressed him.

"I guess I hadn't better take off the bandages till the doctor comes, if you're comfortable.--Your breakfast is ready, Mr. Hartley, and I'll bring something for Albert."

Another knock a few minutes later, and Maud entered with a platter, followed closely by her mother, who carried some tea and milk.

Maud came forward timidly, but when he turned his eyes on her and said in a cheery voice, "Good morning, Miss Welsh!" she flamed out in rosy color and recoiled. She had expected to see him pale, dull-eyed, and with a weak voice, but there was little to indicate invalidism in his firm greeting. She gave place to Mrs. Welsh, who prepared his breakfast.

She was smitten dumb by this turn of affairs; she hardly dared look at him as he sat propped up in bed. The crimson tr.i.m.m.i.n.g on his shirt-front seemed like streams of blood; his head, swathed in bandages, made her shudder. But aside from these few suggestions of wounding, there was little of the horror of the previous day left. He did not look so pale and worn as the girl herself.

However, though he was feeling absurdly well, there was a good deal of bravado in his tone and manner, for he ate but little, and soon sank back on the bed.

"I feel better when my head is low," he explained in a faint voice.

"Can't I do something?" asked the girl, her courage reviving as she saw how ill and faint he really was. His eyes were closed and he looked the invalid now.

"I guess you better write to his folks."

"No; don't do that," he said, opening his eyes; "it will only do them harm an' me no good. I'll be all right in a few days. You needn't waste your time on me; Hartley'll wait on me."

"Mr. Lohr, how can you say such cruel----"

"Don't mind him now," said Mrs. Welsh. "I'm his mother now, and he's goin' to do just as I tell him to--ain't you, Albert?"

He dropped his eyelids in a.s.sent, and went off in a doze. It was all very pleasant to be thus treated. Hartley was devotion itself, and the doctor removed his bandages with the care and deliberation of a man with a moderate practice; besides, he considered Albert a personal friend.

Hartley, after the doctor had gone, said with some hesitation:

"Well, now, pard, I _ought_ to go out and see a couple o' fellows I promised t' meet this morning."

"All right, Jim; all right. You go right ahead on business; I'm goin'

t' sleep, anyway, and I'll be all right in a day or two."

"Well, I will; but I'll run in every hour 'r two and see if you don't want something. You're in good hands, anyway, when I'm gone."

"Won't you read to me?" pleaded Albert in the afternoon, when Maud came in with her mother to brush up the room. "It's getting rather slow business layin' here like this. Course I can't ask Jim to stay and read all the time, and he's a bad reader, anyway; won't you?"

"Shall I, mother?"

"Why, of course, Maud!"

So Maud got a book, and sat down over by the stove, quite distant from the bed, and read to him from "The Lady of the Lake," while the mother, like a piece of tireless machinery, moved about the house at the never-ending succession of petty drudgeries which wear the heart and soul out of so many wives and mothers, making life to them a pilgrimage from stove to pantry, from pantry to cellar, and from cellar to garret--a life that deadens and destroys, coa.r.s.ens and narrows, till the flesh and bones are warped to the expression of the wronged and cheated soul.

Albert's selfishness was in a way excusable. He enjoyed beyond measure the sound of the girl's soft voice and the sight of her graceful head bent over the page. He lay, looking and listening dreamily, till the voice and the sunlit head were lost in his deep, sweet sleep.

The girl sat with closed book, looking at his face as he slept. It was a curious study to her, a young man--_this_ young man, asleep. His brown lashes lay on his cheek; his facial lines were as placid as a child's.

As she looked she gained courage to go over softly and peer down on him.

How boyish he seemed! How little to be feared! How innocent, after all!

As she studied him she thought of him the day before, with closed eyes, a ghastly stream of blood flowing down and soaking her dress. She shuddered. His hands, clean and strong and white, lay out on the coverlet, loose and open, the fingers fallen into graceful lines.

Abruptly, a boy outside gave a shout, and she leaped away with a sudden spring that left her pale and breathless. As she paused in the door and looked back at the undisturbed sleeper, she smiled, and the pink came back into her thin face.

Albert's superb young blood began to a.s.sert itself, and on the afternoon of the second day he was able to sit in his rocking chair before the fire and read a little, though he professed that his eyes were not strong, in order that Maud should read for him. This she did as often as she could leave her other work, which was "not half often enough," the invalid grumbled.

"More than you deserve," she found courage to say.

Hartley let nothing interfere with the book business, and the popular sympathy for Albert he coined into dollars remorselessly.

"You take it easy," he kept saying to his partner; "don't you worry--your pay goes on just the same. You're doing well right where you are. By jinks! biggest piece o' luck," he went on, half in earnest.

"Why, I can't turn around without taking an order--fact! Turned in a book on the livery bill--that's all right. We'll make a clear hundred dollars out o' that little b.u.mp o' yours."

"Little b.u.mp! Say, now, that's----"

"Keep it up--put it on! Don't get up in a hurry. I don't need you to canva.s.s, and I guess you enjoy this 'bout as well." He ended with a sly wink and cough.

Yes; the convalescence was delicious; afterward it grew to be one of the sweetest weeks of his life. Maud reading to him, bringing his food, and singing for him---- yes; all that marred it was the stream of people who came to inquire how he was getting along. The sympathy was largely genuine, as Hartley could attest, but it bored the invalid. He had rather be left in quiet with Walter Scott and Maud, the drone of the long descriptive pa.s.sages being a sure soporific.

He did not say, as an older person might, that she was not to be held accountable for what she did under the stress and tumult of that day; but he unconsciously did so regard her actions, led to do so by the changed conditions. In the light of common day it was hurrying to be a dream.