“’T is idle to be too sanguine. You know my philosophy. I’ve seen a scratched finger kill a man; I’ve known puny babes wriggle out of Death’s hand when I could have sworn it had closed upon them for good and all. Where there ’s life there ’s hope.”
“Ess, I knaw you,” answered Will gloomily; “an’ I knaw when you say that you allus mean there ban’t no hope at all.”
“No, no. A strong, hale woman like your mother need not give us any fear at present. Sleep and rest, cheerful faces round her, and no amateur physic. I’ll see her to-night and send in a nurse from the Cottage Hospital at once.”
Then it was that Miller Lyddon arrived, and presently Will returned home. He wholly mistook Phoebe’s frantic reception, and assumed that her tears must be flowing for Mrs. Blanchard.
“She’ll weather it,” he said. “Keep a gude heart. The gal from the hospital ban’t coming ’cause theer ’s danger, but ’cause she ’m smart an’ vitty ’bout a sick room, an’ cheerful as a canary an’ knaws her business. Quick of hand an’ light of foot for sartin. Mother’ll be all right; I feel it deep in me she will.”
Presently conversation passed to Will himself, and Phoebe expressed a hope this sad event would turn him from his determination for some time at least.
“What determination?” he asked. “What be talkin’ about?”
“The letter you left for faither, and the thing you started to do,” she answered.
“’S truth! So I did; an’ if the sight o’ the smoke an’ then hearin’ o’ mother’s trouble didn’t blaw the whole business out of my brain!”
He stood amazed at his own complete forgetfulness.