"I fear you will pull up the vegetables."
"You can at least show me which are the potatoes."
In spite of a restraint that she tried to disguise, she broke out into a low laugh at this reminiscence, and said: "After that revelation of ignorance you will never trust me again."
"I will trust you in regard to everything except kitchen vegetables," I replied, more in earnest than in jest. "A most important exception," she responded, her old troubled look coming back. "But you are talking far too much. Your face is slightly flushed. I fear you are growing feverish. I will call Mrs. Yocomb now."
"Please do not. I never felt better in my life. You are doing me good every moment, and it's so desperately stupid lying helplessly here."
"Well, I suppose I must humor you a few moments longer," she laughed. "People, when ill, are so arbitrary. By the way, your editorial friends must think a great deal of you, or else you are valuable to them, for your chief writes to Mr. Yocomb every day about you; so do some others; and they've sent enough fruit and delicacies to be the death of an ostrich."
"I'm glad to hear that; it rather increases one's faith in human nature. I didn't know whether they or any one would care much if I died."
"Mr. Morton!" she said reproachfully.
"Oh, I remember my promise to you. If, like a cat, I had lost my ninth life, I would live after your words. Indeed I imagine that you were the only reason I did live. It was your will that saved me, for I hadn't enough sense or spirit left to do more than flicker out."
"Do you think so?" she asked eagerly, and a rich glow of pleasure overspread her face.