"Pore little soul, seems like he had enough without this—not but what I reckon he'll come out o' this a heap sight easier than he will the other. Not a soul on the top o' the yearth to belong to, he hasn't; sent here to fatten up an' live out o' doors, 'count o' being a tubercler. No, honey, he ain't nothin' to Pap an' me 'ceptin' jest one o' the pore little lambs that have a right to any spare love an' shelter an' cuddlin' that's layin' around the world waitin' for sech as him. I used to wonder why the Lord let sech pore little things stay in the world, until I found out how much good they do to folks that look after 'em. Land! I wouldn't be without one of 'em on my hands now, not for more'n I can say. What? Oh, yes, dearie, I take one or more of 'em and build 'em up an' get 'em well, with Doctor Ogilvie's tellin' me how; an' when they go back to the city all well again, I jest take one or two more. Pap an' me wouldn't know what to do now, ef we didn't have some pore little thing to look after. I'm jest that selfish, I begrudge everybody else that has a bigger house the room they got for more of 'em."
When the child had been made clean and cool, and the old woman had shown Rosamund how to draw in the blinds and leave the room in pleasant shadow, she led the way out to the paved place in front of the house.
"You look all tuckered out, honey," she said, when Rosamund had sunk wearily into a rush-seated armchair, "an' I'm goin' to get you some fresh milk."
So for a few minutes the girl was alone, with time to think over the crowding events of the past half hour, which seemed almost like a day. One emotion had come closely upon another, and now she was in this strange little harbor where, apparently, only kind winds blew, the storms of the world outside, a harbor where weak vessels found repair, where passers-by were welcomed and supplied with strength to go on. Subconsciously she wondered whether it might not be the harbor of a new, fair land, herself the storm-buffeted traveler about to find shelter. Then, more in weariness of spirit than in bodily fatigue, she drew the long hatpin from her hat and tossed it aside, leaning her head back against the stone of the house, and closed her eyes.
When Mother Cary returned with a glass of creamy milk, she noted the girl's pallor, the shadows her long lashes cast on her white cheeks.
"I wouldn't feel too bad about it," she said. "The little feller can't be hurt very bad, and I reckon it was jest bein' so scared an' so weak, anyway, that made him go off in his head like that."
Rosamund could not confess that her thoughts had been of herself rather than upon the injured child. "Do you think he will recover?" she asked.
"Well, what Doctor Ogilvie can't do ain't to be done, I know that much," Mother Cary replied. "Folks do say it's an ill wind blows nobody any good, an' it cert'n'y was his ill wind blew us good; 'cause if he hadn't been that sick he couldn't live in the city, he never would 'a' come to the mountings, an' I'm sure I don't see how we ever did get along without him. Why, he's that good a doctor folks still come up here from the city to see him; and many's the one stays at the Summit just to be where he can look after them; and Widder Speers that he lives with told me that doctors from 'way off send for him to talk over sick people with them—jest to ask him what to do, like. Oh, Doctor Ogilvie can do anything anybody can!"
Rosamund was amused, in spite of herself, at the old woman's naïveté. "He was sick, then, when he came?" she asked, idly.
"Yes, but you'd never 'a' known it," Mother Cary told her. "Land! How he did get about from place to place, huntin' out other folks that was ailin'! He hadn't been up here more'n a month before he knew every soul in these mountings, which is more'n I do, though I've lived here forty year an' more. He jest took right a holt, as you might say. That's how come I begun to take care of these pore little helpless city things.