Mrs. Wilson who had supposed that she had not much longer to be with the little family she so loved, was overjoyed when she realized that she would soon be strong again.
She was lying in the darkened room when Harry entered a few moments after the doctor’s departure. At his side she saw someone dressed in blue with white cap and apron. She was too weak to wonder from where the apparition had come, and so she accepted Winona’s presence as a matter of course believing that she had accompanied the doctor from Red Riverton. Harry merely said, “Mother, this is your nurse.”
The little woman held out a frail hand and smiled wanly, then she closed her eyes and rested. She was conscious all that day that she was being tenderly cared for, and, toward evening when Benjy knelt at her side, in answer to her anxious query, he told his mother that the new nurse was also a fine cook. Mrs. Wilson who had wished that she was up that she might prepare the good things her younger son so liked, felt a sense of relief that did much toward restoring her needed strength.
Never once in the two weeks that followed did the little woman suspect that the slender dark-eyed girl who cared for her was the Indian maiden of whom she had heard. Winona, with her black hair coiled under her nurse’s cap in her blue and white gown might easily have been taken for a French girl.
Harry, wishing his mother to learn to love Winona without prejudice had asked Benjy to address her merely as “Nurse.”
At the end of a fortnight, Mrs. Wilson was strong enough to sit up. When Harry believed that his presence was no longer needed at home, he rode to the northern camp to tell his father what had happened. He was greatly relieved because he could now honestly say that all would be well.
This was not hard for the older man to believe, for on their return they found the little mother seated in the living room and beaming a welcome when they opened the front door. From that day, she rapidly regained her strength, and, at the end of the fortnight, she was driven in a big comfortable car to Red Riverton. It was on that ride that Mrs. Wilson made a discovery which pleased her greatly. It was that her son, Harry, really cared for the girl who had nursed her so tenderly. How she knew this she could not have told, perhaps it was just a mother’s intuition.
Another two weeks passed and the happy family was once more gathered in the ranch home. Mrs. Wilson was soon strong enough to walk about the house, and, the long weeks of anxiety having ended, the members of the household again went about their tasks in a natural manner. Benjy returned with his father to the North Camp and Harry asked Winona if she would like to ride with him to inspect a water-hole not far away. Mrs. Wilson had urged her to go, saying that for an hour she could get along nicely alone. It was during that hour that she learned the real identity of her nurse.
CHAPTER XIV
A DEEP LOVE REVEALED
Mrs. Wilson sat in a big comfortable chair in front of the wide hearth on which a log that the boys had dragged down from the mountains, was cheerily burning. The frail woman smiled happily as she watched the flames. How wonderful it was to know that after all she was going to live, perhaps many more years to minister to her little family. In her heart there had been a secret fear for months that she was soon to leave them.