“No,” she said; “a young lady comes every evening about six and leaves the flowers. She always asks about your condition and when she may see you.”
Jimmy was silent for some time. “She comes every evening?” he asked.
“Yes,” replied the nurse.
“May I see her this evening?” asked Jimmy.
“We’ll ask the doctor,” she replied; and the doctor must have given consent, for at six o’clock that evening the nurse brought Edith Hudson to his bedside.
The girl came every evening thereafter and sat with Jimmy as long as the nurse would permit her to remain. Jimmy discovered during those periods a new side to her character, a mothering tenderness that filled him with a feeling of content and happiness the moment that she entered the room, and which doubtless aided materially in his rapid convalescence, for until she had been permitted to see him Jimmy had suffered as much from mental depression as from any other of the symptoms of his disease.
He had felt utterly alone and uncared for, and in this mental state he had brooded over his failures to such an extent that he had reached a point where he felt that death would be something of a relief. Militating against his recovery had been the parting words of Elizabeth Compton the evening that he had dined at her father’s home, but now all that was very nearly forgotten—at least crowded into the dim vistas of recollection by the unselfish friendship of this girl of the streets.
Jimmy’s nurse quite fell in love with Edith.
“She is such a sweet girl,” she said, “and always so cheerful. She is going to make some one a mighty good wife,” and she smiled knowingly at Jimmy.
The suggestion which her words implied came to Jimmy as a distinct shock. He had never thought of Edith Hudson in the light of this suggestion, and now he wondered if there could be any such sentiment as it implied in Edith’s heart, but finally he put the idea away with a shrug.