“I did; but when I told him you were sick with fever, he said he’d rather not, for it was hard enough for well folks to get on at the Lone House, but sick ones would have no sort of a chance at all.”
“That Joe Gunnage always were a regular downright coward,” replied Mrs. Munson, with a snort of disgust. Then she lay back on her pillows, looking so white and spent with the brief excitement, that Nell nodded an emphatic command to Giles to go away and leave the invalid quiet.
In her own heart a storm of fear and misery was raging. What was this old business connected with her grandfather and the man named Brunsen, about which Giles Bailey and his aunt talked so glibly? Was there some law-breaking connected with his life, concerning which she knew nothing?
A vague unreasoning terror seized upon her then, and she quailed at heart as nothing had ever made her quail before.
Ever since she could remember she had had to face hard, grinding poverty, but there had been no shame in that. The father whose memory she cherished so fondly had been a preacher, a scholar, and a gentleman; and although Doss Umpey had been none of these, she had always supposed him to be a straight man according to his lights.
How intensely thankful she felt that she had so carefully hidden the secret of her identity from these people, among whom she had been flung by accident! Of course, the fact might leak out yet; indeed, it must, if Joe Gunnage called at the farm on his way back from the frontier.
Then she thought of the strange manner in which her secret had been so far protected. Both Giles and his aunt had at first supposed her to be Gertrude Lorimer, the other girl; then when the doctor came and explained why the other girl had not been able to come, they had still looked upon the stranger nurse as having come from the neighbourhood of Nine Springs, some one sent by the doctor.
“If only I can get away from here quickly, and hide myself in some place where no one has ever heard of Doss Umpey or the Lone House on the long trail, how thankful I shall be!” Nell exclaimed to herself, and little thought how hard she was to find the task of escaping from this unenviable notoriety.
When Dr. Shaw appeared on the next day, he was greatly pleased with Mrs. Munson’s progress, and said so many complimentary things about Nell, that her cheeks flamed and burned at the unaccustomed praise.
“How is the other girl, if you please?” she asked shyly, when she brought the doctor’s horse for him to mount.