“They have had lots of adventures, have been in a ‘norther,’ an Apache raid, a Pueblo village, a visionary miner’s camp, etc., etc. Indeed, it was at this last stopping-place, while under the care of the miner Burnham’s family—”
Again the paper fell. There was a queer sensation about the nurse’s own heart. Burnham? Her brother? It might be he!
Mr. Manuel could not wait for her recovery, but seized the paper and finished the article for himself, and aloud. He was excited, yet not hurtfully so. Pride, amazement, infinite gratitude thrilled in his tones. When he finished the nurse and her patient could only stare at one another in silence. Then habit asserted itself and she sternly inquired:
“Mr. Manuel, did you do this—leave home without telling your people where you were going and for what?”
Heretofore, he had been ill, meek and submissive. Now he had suddenly recovered. He grew quite bold and self-assertive, and thus convinced the nurse that he was indeed uninjured by this first, startling “news from home.”
“Yes. I now see what a foolish thing it was, but it didn’t seem so then. There was so much uncertainty—But I can’t talk! I’m well, and—Why in the world hasn’t Miguel been here? Or has he? His letter of instructions, it’s past time for opening that—I told him he needn’t write unless trouble happened. I was determined to recover if human will could aid the surgeons and I knew that to hear often from Refugio would tend to make me restless and so hinder my progress. There was plenty of money and it is a land where money counts for less than friendliness.”
“Why hasn’t the manager been here? Probably because that, after he read your letter, he realized how much depended on your peace of mind, which your knowledge of the children’s loss would utterly destroy. He loved you too well to kill you outright.”
“But why, then, if my children were in an Apache outbreak—the men who rescued them—since they must have been rescued—Oh! it’s all a dreadful muddle. Somebody should have put that into the papers—”
“Maybe that was done. How should we know? You’ve been in hospital for more than two months. During all that time until to-day you have neither read for yourself nor listened to reading. In any case, the advertising columns of the daily press are the last things which I, in my busy life, have time for perusing. But—about that Burnham. I know he is my brother. Do you believe he can effect a claim to any part of that mine? or—oh! I forgot!”
He smiled gayly.