The physician drove on, and by and by was leaving directions with Johanna and her protectors, Tom Hersey and his wife. "And, Tom, mind you, no visitors. It's his own wish. Good-night.—O!—that young Mr. Fair. March tells me he's expecting him any time within the next few days, to help lay the corner-stone of this new building up at the colored college; Fair Hall, yes. Whenever he comes take him right up to see March. I promised John you would!"
LXXVII.
"LINES OF LIGHT ON A SULLEN SEA"
From the first hour of Johanna's attendance March began to mend. Whence she came, whither she went, as she moved in and out so pleasantly, he never thought to ask, and never found out that her bed was a pallet laid on the stair-landing just at his door.
The young bloods down in the street were keenly amused. "Doctor, if he was anybody but John March aw she anybody but Johanna"—the rest was too funny for words. "How is he to-day, anyhow? Improving rap'—well! good fo' that! Come, gentlemen, let's—Come, Shot. Doctor, won't you—" And as they went they all agreed that the dark maiden's invincible modesty was like some "subtle emana-ation," as Shotwell expressed it, which charmed all evil out of the grossest eye.
True it was in the convalescent's case, that while Johanna's mere doings had their curative value, her simple presence had more. Yet her greatest healing was in her words; in what she told him. She only answered questions; but these he lightly plied on any and every trivial matter that promised to lead up—or around—to one subject which seemed to allure him without cessation. Yet always at her first pause after entering upon any phase of this topic, he would say, "But that's not what—hem!—I was speaking of," and starting once more, at any distance away, would begin to steal yet another approach toward the same enticing theme.
So the brief time of her appointed service came to its end, neither the Doctor, nor the convalescent, nor even her young mistress, for one moment imagining what dear delight, yet withal what saintly martyrdom to Johanna, this three days' task had been.
In its last hour, when she, to end all well, prepared and brought up the captive's evening meal, she found him sitting up in bed talking to Henry Fair.
"Doctor thinks I can go down to my office Monday. Yes, I knew what ailed me better than he did. I began to recover the moment I quit trying to convince the Lord that He ought to run this world in my private interest. Ah! Johanna, so this is the last, is it? I'm pow'ful sorry! Mr. Fair, you remember Johanna, don't you?"