"You will like this better than the hospital I am sure. Do you love children?"
"No," was Cardo's laconic reply, at which the doctor smiled.
He tried many subjects but failed to get any further answer than "yes" or "no." Most men would have been discouraged when several weeks passed over, and still his patient showed very little signs of improvement. It is true, now he would answer more at length, but he was never heard to volunteer a remark, though he sat for hours in what looked like a "brown study," in which probably only indistinct forms and fantastic shapes passed before his mind's eye. And latterly the doctor too had frequently been observed to fall into a reverie, while his eyes were fixed on Charles Williams's motionless attitude. After much thought, he would sit beside his patient and try to interest him in something going on around him.
Indeed, Cardo's gentle ways, together with his handsome person, had endeared him to all who came in contact with him, and there was not one in the house, from the cook in the kitchen to Dr. Belton's youngest child, who would not have rejoiced to see health restored to the invalid.
One evening, when Jack, a boy of twelve, returned from school, he came bounding into the room in which Cardo sat with his eyes fixed on a newspaper, which he had not turned nor moved for an hour, Sister Vera sitting at the window with her work.
"See, Mr. Williams," said the boy, "what Meta Wright gave me, some gilded gingerbread! isn't it pretty? I have eaten a pig and a lamb—now there is a ship for you."
Cardo put down the paper, and taking the gingerbread in his thin fingers, looked at it with eyes that gradually filled with tears.
"Gingerbread?" he said, looking next at the boy, "gilded gingerbread in the moonlight!"
Sister Vera's eyes and ears were instantly on the alert, while she made a sign of silence to the boy.
Cardo continued to look at the gingerbread. Suddenly he held up his finger and seemed to listen intently.