“A much pleasanter way of getting along—when there is snow, that is. But the cars will be here soon and I must be going. Are you coming over to the depot to welcome the arrivals?”
“No; I cannot leave now because my customers will be coming in, but Patsey will go; he is going to put some cushions in the wood-truck and bring his mother across from the cars, for she is much too weak to walk even such a short distance,” explained Nell.
“A wood-truck? That is a box on wheels without any springs, I suppose. It is not to be thought of. Is Mrs. Lorimer a heavy woman?”
“No; she is about my height, but, of course, much thinner; indeed, she has wasted fearfully of late,” replied Nell.
“Well, I have carried heavier people than you, so I ought to manage Mrs. Lorimer. Patsey can be at the depot with the wood-truck, but we will hope that we shall not need him for the invalid,” said the doctor. Then putting on his cap, he strode away in the gathering dusk.
Nell watched him with a smile quivering about her lips.
“Very kind of him to come up to meet the invalid; but I expect right down at the bottom of his heart it was Gertrude that he thought most about, poor man, though he does not seem to have the courage to tell her so.”
She sighed in a quick, impatient fashion, for well she understood the great barrier which Abe Lorimer’s death had raised between Gertrude and Dr. Russell. The doctor had his little son to keep, and only a poor and casual practice to depend upon; while Gertrude, with an invalid mother, a delicate sister, and three young brothers, was more heavily burdened still.
“If only they would understand how willing I am to take Gertrude’s family off her hands they might get along very well. But I can’t go and say so right out in plain speech; and, oh dear, they are so stupid!” she muttered in impatient speech, as she put some more wood on the sitting-room fire, lighted the lamp standing on the well-spread supper-table, then went back to the kitchen to serve a couple of customers who had just come in on their way back from the mines.
“How nice your food smells; why, it is worth a quarter just to stand inside and sniff,” said one of the men, who had evidently come down in the world, for he spoke with the cultured tone of a man of education and bore himself with the upright carriage of one who has been well drilled.