Every one mourned for Lilith, every one sympathized with Hereward, and served him in every possible way. They “pulled him through,” as the doctor phrased it, though it was but the shadow of the man they raised.
And even now that he was convalescent he was not left to himself.
Mrs. Jab Jordon was now the volunteer housekeeper and nurse, as she had been for the week past, and as she meant to be for the week to come, and her fine health and good spirits and judicious management were as beneficial to the stricken man as anything could be under these adverse circumstances.
It was her hand that had arranged his reclining-chair on the piazza, and placed the stand of fruit and flowers by its side. It was her will that had kindly forced him out of the gloom of his sick-chamber into the sunshine and fresh, fragrant air of that lovely May morning. It was her precaution that still kept from him the loads of well-meaning letters of condolence that he could not have borne to read as yet.
And even now the good woman was upstairs superintending Cely and Mandy in the work of preparing a new room for the patient, who was not to be taken back to the old sick-chamber, which was dismantled and, with all its windows open, turned out, so to speak, to all the airs of spring.
It was a little surprising to all who knew old Nancy, the colored housekeeper who had so long ruled supreme at Cloud Cliffs, that she was not jealous of this invasion of the house by the ladies of the neighborhood. But in fact, Nancy was grateful for their presence and their help.
“’Sides w’ich,” as she confided to Cassy, the cook, “dis ain’t no time fer no po’ mortil to stan’ on deir dignity. De ’sponsibility ob de case is too mons’ous; let alone my heart bein’ broke long ob po’ dear Miss Lilif goin’ to glory de drefful way she did! an’ me fit for nuffin’. It would be flyin’—’deed it’s de trufe—flyin’.”
So Nancy put herself under the orders of Mrs. Jordon, as she had done under her predecessors.
The pale convalescent, sitting in his resting-chair, gazed with languid eyes over the lovely lawn, with its fragrant blossoming trees, and its parterres of flowers in sunny spots, on to the encircling woods filled with birds and bird songs, and beyond to the opal-tinted, mist-vailed cliffs, and to the deep blue sky above them all; yet seemed to take in nothing of the brightness and the beauty.
At length his listless, wandering eyes perceived a figure, at strange variance with the bright summer scene.