“Your Uncle Jep don’t know everything,” returned Creed softly.
No mountaineer ever knocks on a door, but Jephthah Turrentine made considerable racket with the latch before he entered the room.
“Oh—you air awake,” he said cautiously, then, looking about at the others, “an’ got company so airly in the mornin’.” He glanced from the newcomers to his patient. “You look fine—fine!” he asserted with high satisfaction; then turning over his shoulder, “Come right along in, honey—Creed’ll be proud to see ye.”
He paused on the threshold, reaching back a hand and entered, pulling after him Nancy Card—who was Nancy Card no longer. A wild-rose pink was in her withered cheeks under the frank grey eyes. She smiled as Judith had never imagined she could smile. But even then the young people scarcely fathomed the situation.
“Creed,” cried the old man, “I’ve brung ye the best doctor and nurse there is on the mountings. Nancy she run off and left us, and I had to go after her, and I ’lowed I’d make sartain that she’d never run away from me again, so I’ve jest—we jest——”
“Ye ain’t married!” cried Judith, sudden light coming in on her.
“We air that,” announced old Jephthah radiantly.
“Well, Jude, I jest had to take him,” apologised Nancy. “Here was him with the rheumatics every spring, an’ bound and determined that he’d lay out in the bushes deer-huntin’ like he done when he was twenty, and me knowin’ in reason that a good course of dandelion and boneset, with my liniment well rubbed in, would fix him up—why, I jest had to take him.”
She looked about her for support, and she got it from an unexpected quarter.
“Well, I think you done jest right,” piped up Huldah, who had been a silent spectator as long as she could endure it, “I’m mighty glad I’ve got a new mother-in-law, ’caze I know Pap Turrentine’s apt to be well taken keer of in his old days.”