"You will want to come again, Martin," he said; "when are we to have another day?"
"Well, I shall hear how she is every now and then," I answered; "it takes too long a time to come more often than is necessary. But you will bring me if it is necessary?"
"With all my heart," said Captain Carey.
For the next few days I waited with some impatience for Miss Ollivier's promised letter. It came at last, and I put it into my pocket to read when I was alone—why, I could scarcely have explained to myself.
"Dear Dr. Martin," it began, "I have no little commission to trouble you with. Tardif tells me it was quite a mistake, his mother taking a sovereign from me each week. She does not understand English money; and he says I have paid quite sufficient to stay with them a whole year longer without paying any more. I am quite content about that now. Tardif says, too, that he has a friend in Southampton who will buy my hair, and give more than anybody in Guernsey. So I need not trouble you about it, though I am sure you would have done it for me.
"I have not put my foot to the ground yet; but yesterday Tardif carried me all the way down to his boat, and took me out for a little sail under the beautiful cliffs, where we could look up and see all those strange carvings upon the rocks. I thought that perhaps there were real things written there that we should like to read. Sometimes in the sky there are fine faint lines across the blue which look like written sentences, if one could only make them out. Here they are on the rocks, but every tide washes them away, leaving fresh ones. Perhaps they are messages to me, answers to those questions that I cannot answer myself.
"Good-by, my good doctor. I am trying to do every thing you told me exactly; and I am getting well again fast. I do not believe I shall be lame; you are too clever for that. Your patient,
"OLIVIA."
Olivia! I looked at the word again to make sure of it. Then it was not her surname that was Ollivier, and I was still ignorant of that. I saw in a moment how the mistake had arisen, and how innocent she was of any deception in the matter. She would tell Tardif that her name was Olivia, and he thought only of the Olliviers he knew. It was a mistake that had been of use in checking curiosity, and I did not feel bound to put it right. My mother and Julia appeared to have forgotten my patient in Sark altogether.
Olivia! I thought it a very pretty name, and repeated it to myself with its abbreviations, Olive, Livy. It was difficult to abbreviate Julia; Ju I had called her in my rudest school-boy days. I wondered how high Olivia would stand beside me; for I had never seen her on her feet. Julia was not two inches shorter than myself; a tall, stiff figure, neither slender enough to be lissome, nor well-proportioned enough to be majestic. But she was very good, and her price was far above rubies.