“My poor dear little girl, I often come in this way to save kicking my heels at the door; but I wouldn’t have done it, frightening you out of your wits, if I had known you were in here. I thought everybody would be occupied with the two invalids. And how are you, little woman?”
I was so delighted to see him back once more, to feel that at last there was some one to look up to and trust in the house again, that I laughed and cried together as he shook my hands and patted my shoulder, and told me that it would never do to leave me at the Alders in his absence again; he should have to take me with him. I laughed.
“Why, I am too useful here, Mr. Rayner! I don’t know what they would have done without me, with first Haidee ill, and then Sarah. You see, as Mrs. Rayner is never well enough to give any directions, I was obliged to take a good deal upon myself; and I hope you won’t be angry when you hear all I’ve done.”
“No, my child, I am sure I shall not,” said he, helping himself to some cold beef on the sideboard—there was no regular supper at the Alders, but there were always meat and biscuits on the sideboard after tea for those who cared for them. “How is Mrs. Rayner?”
I told him that she was no better and no worse, and that she had moved to-day into the front spare-room.
“To-day?”
“Yes. She was so reluctant to leave her own room that I took the liberty of telling Sarah I would answer to you for delaying the change this one day. Was it too forward of me?” I asked timidly.
“No,” said he very kindly, drawing me into a chair beside him at the table; “I give you full permission to use my authority in any way you think proper.”
“Thank you, Mr. Rayner. And, oh, I don’t know what you will say, but I made Sarah take Haidee’s cot up to my room! The dressing-room in the left wing is so very cold. And then I sent for Doctor Lowe. Was that right? I had heard he was the best doctor in Beaconsburgh.”
I asked this rather nervously, for I knew Mr. Rayner disliked Doctor Lowe. But he was in too good a humor to find fault with anything.