Seeing which, the lady bent over the cot and kissed the little girl, then promptly explained:
"You needn't be troubled, dearie, this is the very best thing that could have happened to us. Your father tired of waiting for you, his head was dizzy, and when he tried to walk home he fell. They hurried him here—his uniform showed he was somebody important—and into that emergency place. There the doctors examined him and they say, O Dorothy C.! they say that there is a chance, a chance of his sometime getting well! Think of that! John may get well! All those other outside doctors, that he paid so much to, told him he never could. He'd just grow worse and worse till—till he died. These don't. They say he has a chance. He's to stay here and be built up on extra nourishments, for awhile, and then he's to go into the country and live. Oh! I'm the happiest woman in Baltimore, this day! And how is my little girl? Though the nurse tells me there's nothing much the matter with you, and that you'll be able to go home with me as soon as you have had your breakfast. Such a late breakfast, Dorothy C., for a schoolgirl! Lucky it's a Saturday!"
Dorothy had never seen her mother like this. At home, when trifles went wrong, she was apt to be a bit sharp-tongued and to make life uncomfortable for father John and their daughter, but now, that this real trouble had befallen, she was so gay! For, even if there was hope that the postman might sometime recover, was he not still helpless in a hospital? And had she forgotten that they had no money except his salary? which would stop, of course, since he could no longer earn it. It was certainly strange; and seeing the gravity steal into the childish face which was so dear to her, mother Martha stooped above it and, now herself wholly grave, explained:
"My dear, don't think I'm not realizing everything. But, since I've been once face to face with the possibility that death—death—was coming to our loved one and now learn that he will still live, as long as I do, maybe, I don't care about anything else. God never shuts one door but He opens another; and we'll manage. Some way we'll manage, sweetheart, to care for father John who has so long cared for us. Now, enough of talk. Here comes a maid with your breakfast; and see. There are your clothes, as fresh and clean as if I had laundered them myself. Maybe you should dress yourself before you eat. Then you are to see your father for a few minutes; and then we'll go home to pack up."
It was long since Mrs. Chester had helped Dorothy to dress, except on some rare holiday occasion, but she did so now, as if the girl were still the baby she had found upon her doorstep. She, also, made such play of the business that the other became even more gay than herself, and chattered away of all that had befallen her, from her discovery of the deserted home till now.
Then came the nice breakfast, so heartily enjoyed that the nurse smiled, knowing there could be nothing seriously amiss with so hungry a patient. Afterward, a quiet walk through long corridors and spacious halls, from which they caught glimpses of cots with patients in them, and passed by wheeled chairs in which convalescents were enjoying a change.
"It's so still! Does nobody ever speak out loud?" whispered Dorothy to her mother, half-afraid of her own footfalls, though she now wore a pair of felt slippers in place of the shoes she had yesterday discarded. "It's the biggest, cleanest, quietest place I could even dream of!"
But Mrs. Chester did not answer, save by a nod and a finger upon lip; and so following the guide assigned them, they came to one of the open bridges connecting two of the hospital buildings, and there was father John, in a rolling chair, wearing a spotless dressing-gown, and holding out both hands toward them, while his eyes fairly shone with delight. An orderly, in a white uniform, was pushing the chair along the bridge, which was so wide and looked down upon such beautiful grounds that it reminded Dorothy of Bellevieu, and he stopped short at their approach. He even stepped back a few paces, the better to leave them free for their interview.
But if there was any emotion to be displayed at that meeting, it was not of a gloomy sort; and it was almost in his wife's very words that the postman exclaimed:
"To think I should get impatient, lose my head, tumble down, and—up into this fine place! Where I've heard the best of news and live like a lord! Who wouldn't give his legs a rest, for a spell, if he could have such a chair as this to loll in while another man does his walking for him! Well, how's the girl? Why, since when have you taken to wearing slippers so much too big for you? I should think they'd bother you in walking as much as my limpsy feet did me."