"MISS APPLETON ... ASKED IF I WOULD SIT WITH PAPA FOR A
SHORT TIME."
Nannie was lying down with a headache, and nurse, Miss Marston, and the others were away upstairs; Phil had not yet come home; so I said, "Very well," and walked in.
Papa was lying in bed, and he did look awful!—white and thin! He put out his hand as I went up to the bed, and said with a little smile, "Why, it is Jack! how do you do, my dear?" then he drew me down and kissed me. I would love to have told him how very, very glad I was that he was better, but I choked up so I couldn't get out a word. I just stood there hanging on to his hand, until he drew it away and said, "Take a seat until the nurse returns."
Miss Appleton had told me to sit where papa could see me, so I took a chair that somebody had left standing near the foot of the bed, and in full view of him.
It was very quiet in the room after that; papa lay with his eyes closed, and I could see how badly he looked. He was very pale,—kind of a greyish white,—his eyes were sunk 'way in, and there were quite big hollows in his temples and his cheeks. I wondered if he knew that he had nearly died, and that we had prayed for him in church; then I thought of the figure of the angel that we'd seen in the clouds that afternoon in the schoolroom, and of the Beautiful City—"O mother dear, Jerusalem"—where everything is lovely and everybody so happy, and I wondered again if papa were sorry or glad that he was going to get better. You see he would have had dear mamma there, and been with the King "in His felicity;" but then he wouldn't have had the Fetich or his books!
Suddenly papa opened his eyes and looked at me. "Jack," he said, "suppose you take another seat,—over there behind the curtain. I will call you if I need anything."
He told Nannie afterward—and she told me, so I shouldn't do it again—that I'd "stared him out of countenance." I was awfully sorry; I wouldn't have done such a rude thing for the world, you know,—I didn't even know I was doing it; but, as I've told you before, when I'm alone with papa, I somehow just have to look and look at him.
I'd hardly taken my seat behind the curtain when the door opened and Fee came slowly in. He leaned heavily on his cane and caught on to the different pieces of furniture to help him make his way to papa's bedside. They just clasped hands, and for a minute neither of them said a word; then Felix began: "Oh, sir, I thank God that you are spared,"—his voice shook so he had to stop.
Papa said gently: "More reference-making for you, my lad; I am evidently to be allowed to finish my work." And then Fee began again.
He didn't say a great deal, and it was in a low tone,—a little slow, too, at first, as if he were holding himself in,—but there was something in his voice that made my heart swell up in me as it did that day I thrashed Henderson. It's a queer feeling; it makes one feel as if one could easily do things that would be quite impossible at any other time.