"Well, I thought of it, anyway, and I wasn't going to do while you were ill and helpless what you didn't want me to do when you were well."
"You mean you told nobody all these weeks?"
"Well, I told one or two people, but I didn't accept charity from them. The General was away, you know, but some people from the office came over with offers of help—and I told them we needed nothing. Dr. Theophilus was too far away to treat you, but he has come almost every day with a pitcher of Mrs. Clay's chicken broth. Oh, we've prospered, Ben, there's no doubt of that, we've prospered!"
"How soon may I get up?"
"Not for three weeks, and it will be another three weeks even if you're good, before you can go back to the office."
A sob rose in my throat, but I bit it back fiercely before it passed my lips.
"Oh, Sally, my darling, why did you marry me?"
"You cruel boy," she returned cheerfully, as she smoothed my pillows, "when you know that if I hadn't married you there wouldn't be any little Benjamin in the world."
After this the slow days dragged away, while I consumed chicken broth and milk punches with a frantic desire to get back my strength. Only to be on my feet again, and able to lift the burden from Sally's shoulders! Only to drive that tired look from her eyes, and that patient, divine smile from her lips! I watched her with jealous longing while I lay there, helpless as a fallen tree, and I saw that she grew daily thinner, that the soft redness never left her small, childlike hands, that three fine, nervous wrinkles had appeared between her arched eyebrows. Something was killing her, while I, the man who had sworn before God to cherish her, was but an additional burden on her fragile shoulders. And yet how I loved her! Never had she seemed to me more lovely, more desirable, than she did as she moved about my bed in her gingham apron, with the anxious smile on her lips, and the delicate furrows deepening between her eyebrows.
"How soon? How soon, Sally?" I asked almost hourly, kissing the scar on her wrist when she bent over me.