A blazing fire in the great kitchen fireplace so nearly accomplished (by bedtime) the drying of the clothes, that in the morning they were perfectly dry, the hot bricks and mouldering log giving out heat all night long. In the morning Mr. Whitman carried to the porch water in a tub, soap and his clean clothes, and told James to wash himself, put them on and then come out to his breakfast.
When James had eaten his breakfast (Mr. Whitman and Peter having eaten and gone to the field), the good wife cut his hair which was of great length, gave his head a thorough scrubbing with warm soapsuds, and completed the process with a fine-toothed comb. Removing carefully the bandages she next examined his leg.
“It was a deep cut, but it’s doing nicely,” she said, “there’s not a bit of proud flesh in it; you must sit in the house till it heals up.” When having bound up the wound she was about to leave him, he murmured,—
“You’re good to me.”
This was not a very fervent manifestation of gratitude, but it betokened that the spirit within was not wholly petrified; as Alice Whitman looked into that vacant face she perceived by the moisture of the eyes, that there was a lack not so much of feeling as of the power to express it.
“God bless you, I’ll act a mother’s part towards you; it shall be your own fault if you are not happy now. I know God sent you here, for I cannot believe that anything short of Divine Power would have ever brought my husband to take a redemptioner.”
Bertie and Maria, who had been looking on in silence, now ran into the field to tell their father and Peter all their mother had said and done, and that the redemptioner had spoken to her.
“Father,” said Maria, “if mother is his mother, will he be our brother?”
“Not exactly; your mother meant that she would treat him just as she does you, and so you must treat him as you do each other, because your mother has said so, and that’s sufficient.”
“Then we mustn’t call him a redemptioner?”