“Where is my Cousin Margaret?”
“I—I don’t exactly know. Some hotel, Tipkins was taking her. I’ll seek her now and tell her the good news. Oh! my lamb, my lamb!”
“There, Ephy, dear! Be good. Now go and tell her I’m all right and tell her, too, how splendid Sophy Nestor was. She covered me with her own self so that I should not be burned,—she would rather be herself! Go tell her, tell her quick! She thought Sophy wasn’t—a Waldron, but, Ephy dear! She is more Waldron-y than any of us! Go tell her, and come back soon. I guess I can be ‘discharged,’ maybe right away. I’m not the hurt one, only Sophy. And I’ll stay just long enough to make her feel how splendid a place a hospital really is and not that dreadful one she used to think.”
Indeed, he had to go. He had stayed as long as the nurse thought wise, but it was a far different old man who left that house of mercy from him who had entered it, believing his darling done to death.
By the very next morning Jessica was up and dressed; her scorched clothing replaced by an outfit Madam had promptly sent, with the request that the little girl be taken to her at her hotel as soon as the authorities deemed it safe. That, they decided, might be almost at once. The hospital was overcrowded, there was no room for those who did not really need attention, and Jessica’s healthy frame had promptly recovered from the shock of her frightful experience. There remained only the bit of talk that was to be allowed between her and her rescuer. Sitting with her own blistered hands resting on that part of Sophy’s body which was least covered by bandages, Jessica said:
“I’ve got to go away now, darling, but I shall come back. You’re going to get well right soon, the doctors say, and oh! Sophy, I heard one of them say, too, that your back could be made as straight as mine! Think of that! Never to have to be afraid of people looking at you, never to be weak and tired there, any more! Oh! aren’t you glad you came? It isn’t a real hunchback, you know; only you were let to fall when you were little and got twisted somehow. I think it’s like a fairy story. Anyhow, it’s just what my darling mother says: ‘Life is a chain.’ One thing after another form the links of it and none of them happen except God wills. I don’t see why He willed that my Cousin Margaret should lose her beautiful old home that seemed more to her than anything in this world. All her pretty clothes and old, old ‘antiques,’ and just had her life saved. Why, it seems as if all those hunting people on that carpet in the back drawing-room must have felt the flames and suffered!
“Never mind. That’s past. What she will do next I don’t know; only this I’m sure of, she’ll let me come to see you every day; and maybe—maybe, she’ll come, too. Now, I’m going. Ephraim is here with the carriage and I must. If you’d like it better, maybe my Cousin Margaret will let me pay for having you in a ‘private’ room away from——”
“No, no, no! I don’t want to be private! I want to feel there are heaps and slathers of folks all around me, just as there used to be in Aveny A. I’d die to be alone with nobody but them doctors waitin’ to cut me up.”
“Now, Sophy Nestor, you quit that! I’ve told you before that you didn’t know a thing about hospitals. I do. I’ve lived in one once, away home in California. They’re the blessedest places are. Your Granny Briggs is coming to see you this morning. Ephraim is to fetch her in the carriage, after he takes me to my old lady first. Isn’t that funny? Each of us has our own old lady that we think is the nicest in the world! Now, I’m going. Hear me say! Before you’ve been in this pleasant place even another day you’ll think it’s just as nice as I do. See if you don’t. Now, good-by. I can’t begin to thank you. Words couldn’t do it. Maybe deeds can, and I’ll try them. Good-by. Try to be happy and you’ll get well quick. Good-by, good-by!”
Jessica found her Cousin Margaret deep in consultation with Madam Melanie and that other dressmaker from the side street. But the Madam instantly ceased speaking to these waiting modistes, to clasp the girl in her arms and to hold her close, close. In that one firm embrace was a world of meaning, from this undemonstrative old dame. Then she released the child, merely retaining one small hand in her own, while she continued her conference concerning the replenishing of the wardrobes so completely destroyed by fire. Neither she nor Jessica had anything left save what they had escaped in; and the simple ready-made suit purchased to leave the hospital in that morning.