Leaving Obed to deprive his feet of their squeaky new coverings, Philip and Mrs. Probasco stepped lightly toward the kitchen and on tiptoe drew near the bedroom door.
Sure enough, Gerald’s slumber was profound. The kind-hearted woman followed Touchtone to the bedside in curiosity and pity. She beheld the face of this other of her two uninvited guests with a great stir in her motherly heart and a quick admiration of Gerald’s strange and just now singularly pathetic beauty. With a woman’s soft fingers she ventured to touch his skin, and with intent ear she listened to the sleeper’s breathing.
“He’s better than he was, I guess,” she said in a hushed voice to Philip. “His skin’s damp, an’ he breathes in a good deal healthier way than I expected. Fever’s gone down as soon as it came up, I dare say. How han’some he is!—a reg’lar picture. From New York, did you say?”
Obed looked in at the door in anxious interest. “You stay here with him while I fly around and get things sort of settled and more ready for whatever’s best for us to do.” She glided out, closing the door after her. Smothered sounds, that now and then came from behind it, hinted to Philip as he sat that the flying around had begun to some purpose.
Excellent Mrs. Probasco! Whatever may have been the sentiments of your housekeeper’s heart at such a delayed home-coming and such a finding of your entire domestic establishment taken possession of by boys, and not only an asylum, but a hospital, all at once on your hands—whatever the amusement or vexation at the general upsetting of order on each side, you kept it all to yourself! She darted softly about. “Time enough for talk, by and by,” she said, sharply, to Obed, who was accustomed to act pretty much as she commanded. “Then we’ll talk. We know plenty to start right at. We must just take care of these boys as well as we can, till they’re ready to leave us an’ go ahead on their journey. An’, by the way, Mr. Touchtone says they’d ought to get some sort of word to their friends right away, just as soon as we see how that boy is when he wakes. Of course they’d ought! So I advise you, after you been over the place, an’ done up all those chores old Murtagh’s kindly left for you, to get the boat ready for early to-morrow morning, when you can hurry over to Chantico.”
Obed hastened off, his Sunday go-to-meeting clothes exchanged for his every-day array, and disappeared down the garden with the chickens trooping after him in joyful expectancy; Mrs. Probasco kept at work, now and then slipping in to consult Touchtone or calling him to her.
Daylight began to wane. Gerald slept on, occasionally appearing to be just on the point of awakening, but always drifting back into sounder sleep again. Numerous, and with many hurried and whispered paragraphs of further explanation and questions and answers, were the interviews between Philip and his bustling hostess during the remnant of time before candle-light. With its windows and doors wide open, and the smell of supper coming appetizingly from the kitchen, and with a general sense of human occupation about it, the old dwelling was already like a different place from its former mysterious self. The dog (“You will call him Towzer, but his real name’s Jock,” Mrs. Probasco protested) trotted about. Upper rooms were unsealed, and Touchtone stared about them, meeting nothing to excite his curiosity except one or two quaint and battered pieces of furniture that seemed in keeping with the old house rather than with any modern inmates.
And before long came history, bit by bit, from Mrs. Probasco or Obed. As Philip had expected, the farm and premises on Chantico Island were not owned, but rented, by them—had been so for many years, through an agent.
The dignified, isolated old dwelling, half farm-house, half mansion, still belonged in a family line once distinguished in the county for wealth and social position—the Jennisons. Other people might live in it, but it was always haunted by the atmosphere of stately earlier days and aristocratic occupants.