But at the kiss the boy’s eyelashes had swept down upon his cheek; and, when she looked up from reading the thermometer, she saw a tear glisten unwillingly beneath the lashes.
The next two days were a time of untold joy to Miss Marilla while she petted and nursed her soldier boy back to some degree of his normal strength. She treated him just as if he were a little child who had dropped from the skies to her loving ministrations. She bathed his face, and puffed up his pillows, and took his temperature, and dosed him, and fed him, and read him to sleep—and Miss Marilla could read well, too; she was always asked to read the chapter at the Fortnightly Club whenever the regular reader whose turn it was failed. And while he was asleep she cooked dainty, appetizing little dishes for him. They had a wonderful time together, and he enjoyed it as much as she did. The fact was he was too weak to object, for the little red devils that get into the blood and kick up the fight commonly entitled grippe had done a thorough work with him; and he was, as he put it, “all in and then some.”
He seemed to have gone back to the days of his childhood since the fever began to abate, and he lay in a sweet daze of comfort and rest. His troubles and perplexities and loneliness had dropped away from him, and he felt no desire to think of them. He was having the time of his life.
Then suddenly, wholly unannounced and not altogether desired at the present stage of the game, Mary Amber arrived on the scene.
CHAPTER V
Mary was radiant as the sunny morning in a little red tam, and her cheeks as red as her hat from the drive across country. She appeared at the kitchen door quite in her accustomed way just as Miss Marilla was lifting the dainty tray to carry her boy’s breakfast up-stairs, and she almost dropped it in her dismay.
“I’ve had the grandest time!” breezed Mary gayly. “You don’t know how beautiful the country is, all wonderful bronze and brown with a purple haze, and a frost like silver lace this morning when I started. You’ve simply got to put on your wraps and come with me for a little while. I know a place where the shadows melt slowly, and the frost will not be gone yet. Come quick! I want you to see it before it’s too late. You’re not just eating your breakfast, Auntie Rill! And on a tray, too! Are you sick?”
Miss Marilla glanced guiltily down at the tray, too transparent even to evade the question.