“He will say I persuaded you to do that, too. It would embarrass me very seriously if you should send him any note now.”
Dorothy was quick to see this aspect of the matter, though without suggestion it would never have occurred to her extraordinarily simple and candid mind.
It was not long after Dorothy left him when Edmonia Bannister made her daily visit to the fever camp, accompanied by her maid and bearing delicacies for the sick. After her visit to Dorothy’s quarters Arthur engaged her in conversation. He told her of what had happened, and expressed his repugnance to the task thus laid upon him.
“I cannot sympathize with you in the least,” said the young woman. “I am glad it has happened—glad on more accounts than one.”
“Yes, I suppose you are,” he answered, meditatively, “but that’s because you do not understand. I wish I could have a good, long talk with you, Edmonia, about this thing—and some other things.”
He added the last clause after a pause, and in a tone which suggested that perhaps the “other things” were weightier in his mind than this one.
“Why can’t you?” the girl asked.
“Why, I can’t leave my sick people long enough for a visit to Branton. It will be many weeks yet before I shall feel free to leave this plantation.”
The girl thought a moment, and then said, with unusual deliberation:
“I can spare an hour now; surely you might give a like time. Why can’t we sit in Dorothy’s little porch and have our talk now? Dorothy has gone to the big tent, and is busy with the sick, and if you should be needed you will be here to respond to any call. I see how worried you are, and perhaps I may be able to help you with advice—or at the least with sympathy.”