Perhaps she thought me cold, “professional,” as if she had looked for a friend, and found only the doctor. Perhaps,—nay, it must be so, she never thought of me at all, except as “the doctor.”
“Where is your father?”
“Upstairs; we carried him at once to his room. Will you come?”
So I followed—I seemed to have nothing to do but to follow that light figure, with the voice so low, the manner so quiet,—quieter than I ever expected to see hers, or any woman's, under such an emergency. I? what did I ever know of women? What did I deserve to know, except that a woman bore me? It is an odd fancy, but I have never thought so much about my mother as within the last few months. And sometimes, turning over the sole relics I have of hers, a ribbon or two, and a curl of hair, and calling to mind the few things Dallas remembered about her, I have imagined my mother, in her youth, must have been something like this young girl.
She entered the bed-room first.
“You may come in now. You will not startle him; I think he knows nobody.”
I sat down beside my patient. He lay, just as he had been brought in from the road, with a blanket and counterpane thrown over him, breathing heavily, but quite unconscious.
“The light, please. Can you hold it for me? Is your hand steady?” And I held it a moment to judge. That weakness cost me too much; I took care not to risk it again.
When I finished my examination, and looked up, Miss Theodora was still standing by me. Her eyes only asked the question—which, thank God, I could answer as I did.
“Yes—it is a more hopeful case than I expected.”