And those who met the excited boy running through the street, supposed it was a life-errand on which he was dispatched.
The doctor came—not the old family physician, whose age and experience entitled him to the most implicit confidence—but a youthful partner, to whom childhood was a mysterious and somewhat unapproachable thing.
Of what fine, almost imperceptible links is the chain of deception formed! Helen had no intention of acting the part of a dissembler when she formed the desperate resolution of leaving her lonely chamber. She expected to meet reproaches, perhaps punishment, but anything was preferable to the horrors of her own imagination. But when she found herself greeted as a sleep-walker, she had not the moral courage to close, by an avowal of the truth, the door of escape a mother’s gentle hand had unconsciously opened. She did nut mean to dissemble sickness, but when her mother pleaded sickness as a reason for not sending her back to the lone, dark chamber, she yielded to the plea, and really began to think herself very ill. Her head did throb and ache, and her eyes burned, as if hot sand were sprinkled over the balls. She was not afraid of the doctor’s medicine, for the last time he had prescribed for her, he had given her peppermint, dropped on white sugar, which had a very pleasing and palatable taste. She loved the old doctor, with his frosty hair and sunny smile, and lay quietly in her mother’s arms, quite resigned to her fate, surprising as it was. But when she beheld a strange and youthful face bending over her, with a pair of penetrating, dark eyes, that looked as if they could read the deepest secrets of the heart, she shrank back in dismay, assured the mystery of her illness would all be revealed. The next glance reassured her. She was sure he would be kind, and not give her anything nauseous or dreadful. She watched his cheek, as he leaned over her, to feel her pulse, wondering what made such a beautiful color steal over it growing brighter and brighter, till it looked as if the fire had been glowing upon it. She did not know how very young he was, and this was the first time he had ever been called to visit a patient alone, and that she, little child as she was, was a very formidable object to him—considered as a being for whose life he might be in a measure responsible.
“I would give her a composing mixture,” said he, gently releasing the slender wrist of his patient—“her brain seems greatly excited, but I do not apprehend anything like an inflammation need be dreaded. She is very nervous, and must be kept quiet.”
Helen felt such inexpressible relief, that forgetting her character of an invalid, she lifted her head, and gave him such a radiant look of gratitude it quite startled him.
“See!” exclaimed Louis, rubbing his hands, “how bright she looks. The doctor’s coming has made her well.”
“Don’t make such a fuss, brother, I can’t study,” cried Mittie, tossing her hair impatiently from her brow. “I don’t believe she’s any more sick than I am, she just does it to be petted.”
“Mittie!” said her mother, glancing towards the young doctor.
Mittie, with a sudden motion of the head peculiar to herself, brought the hair again over her face, till it touched the leaves of the book, in whose contents she seemed absorbed; but she peeped at the young doctor through her thick, falling locks, and thought if she were sick, she would much rather send for him than old Doctor Sennar.
The next morning Helen was really ill and feverish. The excitement of the previous evening had caused a tension of the brain, which justified the mother’s fears. At night she became delirious, and raved incoherently about the worm-eaten traveler, the spinning-woman, and the grave-house to which they were bound.