This was a great comfort to Nell, who felt she could easily have too much of his society, for on the brief occasions when he was in the house, he would sit with his chubby round face propped on one hand, silently gazing at her, until she became so nervous that she did not know what to do with herself.
It never occurred to her that his silent gazing was prompted by deep admiration for her active movements and resourceful ways, or she would have been more uncomfortable still. But, as it was, she was thankful his farm work kept him so busy that it left him scanty leisure for sitting in the house.
The day before Nell expected the doctor to pay his second visit, she had a scare which made her heart beat furiously.
She was looking out of the window in the afternoon, thinking how she would love to go berry-gathering in the forest, if she could have left her invalid, when a man on horseback rode in at the gate shutting off the forest trail, and she instantly recognized him to be Joe Gunnage, who had come to live on Blue Bird Ridge.
Giles Bailey, who was in the yard, came up and spoke to the man, and talked to him for perhaps ten minutes; then, without dismounting, Joe Gunnage rode back by the way he had come, and Giles came on towards the house with news writ large across his fat round face.
Nell fled at his approach, taking refuge in the sick-room, where she dropped into a chair on the far side of the bed, and, picking up a half-darned stocking, worked away as if her whole attention were absorbed in the effort to get the holes filled in with the utmost dispatch.
Mrs. Munson was sitting up in bed, propped up with pillows and swathed in shawls, for the day was cool, with a brisk wind blowing.
“It’ll be a warning to me if I pull through this, Miss Hamblyn, not to let Giles get so short of socks and stockings,” she was saying, in a plaintive tone. “It always seemed so prudent and economical to be just doing with the three pairs, two off and one on, but a fit of sickness is a regular eye-opener, I can tell you, and the poor lad would have gone barefoot in a few days more if it had not been for you.”
“I say, aunt, here is news! May I come in? But I mustn’t stay more than two minutes, for I’ve left the hosses hitched to the field gate, and there ain’t much telling what mischief they will be up to if I ain’t there to look after ’em. Whom do you think I’ve been talking to here, just outside the window?”
“Not the President, I suppose, though I don’t know as you could look more bursting with news if it had been him and half the senators from Washington to keep him company,” Mrs. Munson replied, in a caustic manner.