"O pitiful Christ!" she sobbed, dropping into a chair and hiding her face in the crook of her arm; "he's done it at last!—he's trying to hide, and that's what they've been waiting for! And I don't know where to look!"
But Matthew Broffin, tilting lazily in his chair on the down-town hotel porch, knew very well where to look, and he was watching the one outlet of the hiding-place as an alert, though outwardly disregardful, house-cat watches a mouse's hole.
XXXVII
THE QUALITY OF MERCY
On no less an authority than that of the great doctor who came again from Chicago for a second consultation with Doctor Farnham, Andrew Galbraith owed his life during the two days following his return to consciousness to the unremitting care and devotion of one person.
Seconding the efforts of the physicians, and skilfully directing those of the nurses, Margery threw herself into the vicarious struggle with the generous self-sacrifice which counts neither cost nor loss; and on the third day she had her reward. Her involuntary guest and charge was distinctly better, and again, so the two doctors declared, the balance was inclining slightly toward recovery.
It was in the afternoon of this third day, when she had been reading to him, at his own request, the sayings of the Man on the Mount, that he referred for the first time to the details of the accident which had so nearly blotted him out. Upon his asking, she related the few and simple facts of the rescue, modestly minimizing her own part in it, and giving her companion in the catboat full credit.
"The writer-man," he said thoughtfully, when she had finished telling him how Griswold had worked over him in the boat, and how he would not give up. "I remember; you fetched him out to the hotel with you one day: no, you needna fear I'll be forgetting him." Then, with a shrewd look out of the steel-gray eyes: "How long have you been knowing him, Maggie, child?"