“Quite wild arter her,” said the widow. “’Course, I wouldn’t say nothin’ abeout it. Young men have funny fancies, I ’xpect, when they air sick.”
“And she came up and saw me? Yes! seems to me I remember of her being in the room once. But my memory is rather hazy,” confessed the young man. “It seems to me at one time that the room was full of people—shadowy people—— Wasn’t there anyone else to see me?”
“Oh no,” said Mrs. Beasely, bridling a little, and of course not considering Janice’s practical attentions in the same class with Miss Bowman’s call. “I should hope not. I wouldn’t have allowed it.”
“Dear me!” said Nelson, whimsically, “you’d be careful of my reputation as a respectable young man, Mother Beasely, I know.”
“I most sartainly would,” declared the lady, firmly.
“So Annette was the only girl who came to see me?” Nelson mused, and put away the broth. “I don’t want any more,” he said, and sank back into the pillow.
Janice did not come to help now that he was better. In fact, as the weather remained open, she ran back and forth to the seminary every day, stopping before the widow’s house night and morning to inquire after the patient. But she did not go in now that Nelson was conscious and likely to ask questions.
He heard the motor-car come to a halt and then start on again, more than once; and finally he asked the widow if it wasn’t Janice’s car.
“Sure it is. She’s just taking little Lottie out for a ride,” said the widow, having already given her bulletin of the patient’s convalescence to Janice, and now peering through the shutters of the blind.
“I suppose she comes to Hopewell’s on errands,” sighed Nelson, and said no more about it. Nor did Mrs. Beasely imagine for an instant that Nelson Haley had more than ordinary interest in Janice Day and her doings.