“You’re very kind,” he said almost curtly. “I dislike to make you so much trouble——”
Perhaps it was owing to Mary’s presence that the transaction went through without question, and in a few minutes more they were back in the car again, Mary tucking up her big patient fussily.
“You’re going to put this around your neck,” she said, drawing a bright woolly scarf from her capacious coat-pocket, “and around your head,” she added, drawing a fold comfortingly up around his ears and the back of his head. “And keep it over your nose and mouth. Breathe through it; don’t let this cold air get into your lungs,” she finished with a businesslike air as if she were a nurse.
She drew the ends of the scarf around, completely hiding everything but his eyes, and tucked the ends into the neck of the fur coat. Then she produced another lap-robe from some region beneath her feet, and tucked that carefully around him. It was wonderful being taken care of in this way; if he only had not been so cold, so tired, and so sore all over he could have enjoyed it. The scarf had a delicate aroma of spring and violets, something that reminded him of pleasant things in the past; but it all seemed like a dream.
They were skimming along over the road up which he had come at so laborious a pace, and the icy wind cut his eyeballs. He closed his eyes, and a hot curtain seemed to shut him out from a weary world. Almost he seemed to be spinning away into space. He tried to open his mouth under the woollen fragrance and speak; but his companion ordered him sharply to be still till he got where it was warm, and a sharp cough like a knife caught him. So he sank back again into the perfumed silence of the fierce heat and cold that seemed to be raging through his body, and continued the struggle to keep from drifting into space. It did not seem quite gallant or gentlemanly to say nothing, nor soldierly to drift away like that when she was being so kind. And then a curious memory of the other girl drifted around in the frost of his breath mockingly, as if she were laughing at his situation, almost as if she had put him there and was glad. He tried to shake this off by opening his eyes and concentrating them on Mary Amber as she sat sternly at her wheel, driving her little machine for all it was worth, her eyes anxious, and the flush on her cheek bright and glowing. The fancy came to him that she was in league with him against the other girl. He knew it was foolish, and he tried to drive the idea away; but it stayed till she passed her own hedge and stopped the car at Miss Marilla’s gate.
Then it seemed to clear away, and common sense reigned for a few brief moments while he stumbled out of the car and staggered into Miss Marilla’s parlor and into the warmth and cheer of that good woman’s almost tearful, affectionate welcome.
“I want you to take that,” he said, hoarsely pressing into her hand the roll of bills he had got at the bank; and then he slid down into a big chair, and everything whirled away again.
Miss Marilla stood aghast, looking at the money and then at the sick soldier, till Mary Amber took command. He never remembered just what happened, nor knew how he got up-stairs and into the great warm, kind bed again, with hot-broth being fed him, and hot-water bags in places needing them. He did not hear them call the doctor on the telephone, nor know just when Mary Amber slipped away down to her car again and rode away.
But Mary Amber knew that this was the afternoon when The Purling Brook Chronicle went to press, and she had an item that must get in. Quite demurely she handed the envelope to the woman editor just as she was preparing to mail the last of her copy to the printer in the city. The item read: “Miss Marilla Chadwick, of Shirley Road, is entertaining over the week-end Sergeant Lyman Gage, of Chicago, but just returned from France. Sergeant Gage is a member of the same division and came over in the same ship with Miss Chadwick’s nephew, Lieutenant Richard Chadwick, of whom mention has been made in a former number, and has seen long and interesting service abroad.”
Mary Amber was back at the house almost before she had been missed and just as the doctor arrived, ready to serve in any capacity whatever.