“Why, when did they bring them in from the Dew Pond?” she asked herself, again aloud.
With a sudden stab of memory, she reached her hand up on the wall. How curious! Only yesterday she could scarcely touch the spring; now her hand went far beyond it. She pressed. The little panel opened slowly. She raised herself in bed and looked through the aperture.
Glorious Lutie’s room was stark—bare, save for a bed and her long wooden writing-table.
Her thoughts flew madly ... suddenly her whole acceptance of things crumbled. Why! She wasn’t Cherie and eight. She was Susannah and twenty-five; and the last time she had been anywhere she had been in New York.... Lightnings of memory tore at her ... the Carbonado Mining Company ... Eloise ... a Salvation Army woman on the street ... roofers. Yet this was Blue Meadows. She did not have to pinch herself or press on her sleepy eyelids. It was Blue Meadows. The trumpet-vine, though as gigantic as Jack’s beanstalk, proved it. The painted furniture proved it. The Chinese toys proved it. Yes, and if she wanted the final touch that clinched all argument, there beside the head of the bed was the maple gazelle. This really was not the final proof. The final proof was human and it entered the room at that moment in the person of Mrs. Spash. And Mrs. Spash—in her old, quaint inaccurate way—was calling her as Cherry.
Susannah burst into tears.
“Oh, I feel so much better now,” Susannah said after a little talk; more sleep; then talk again. “I’m going to be perfectly well in a little while. I want to get up. And oh, dear Mrs. Spash—do you remember how sometimes I used to call you Mrs. Splash? I do want as soon as possible to see Mr. Lindsay and his cousin—Miss Stockbridge, did you say? I want to thank them, of course. How can I ever thank them enough? And I want to talk to him about the biography. Oh, I’m sure I can give him so much. And I can make out a list of people who can tell him all the things you and I don’t remember; or never knew. And then, in my trunk in New York, is a package of all Glorious Lutie’s letters to me. I think he will want to publish some of them; they are so lovely, so full of our games—and jingles, and even drawings. Couldn’t I sit up now?”
“I don’t see why not,” Mrs. Spash said. “You’ve slept for nearly twenty-six hours, Cherry. You waked up once—or half-waked up. We gave you some hot milk and you went right to sleep again.”
“It’s going to make me well—just being at Blue Meadows,” Susannah prophesied. “If I could only stay— But I’m grateful for a day, an hour.”
Later, she came slowly down the stairs—one hand on the rail, the other holding Mrs. Spash’s arm. She wore her faded creamy-pink, creamy-yellow Japanese kimono, held in prim plaits by the broad sash, a big obi bow at the back. Her red hair lay forward in two long glittering braids. Her face was still pale, but her eyes overran with a lucent blue excitement. It caught on her eyelashes and made stars there.
A slim young man in flannels; tall with a muscular litheness; dark with a burnished tan; handsome; arose from his work at the long refectory table. He came forward smiling—his hand outstretched. “My cousin, Miss Stockbridge, has run in to Boston to do some shopping,” he explained. “I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you up, or how glad she will be.” He took her disengaged arm and reinforced Mrs. Spash’s efforts. They guided her into a big wing chair. The young man found a footstool for her.