“Please come to my room on receipt of this.”
XII.—IN WHICH NORRIS TAKES HIS LIGHT FROM UNDER THE BUSHEL
I FOUND Norris in bed, propped up with pillows and looking very pale. His mother and nurse were with him; the ladies had gone out to dinner with Forbes and would spend an hour or so at the ball.
“I had a bad turn at ten o'clock,” said Norris, “but the doctor came and patched me up, and has gone out for a walk. Mother, will you and the nurse go into the other room until I call you? I want to talk with Mr. Potter.”
Mrs. Norris, the elder, was a slim, tender little woman, with a flavor of the old-time Yankee folks in her customs and conversation. When she was not doing something for her “boy,” as she called him, I often found her sitting in her rocking-chair by the window with her fancy-work or her Bible. Once when I sat waiting to see Norris, while he was napping, she sang “The Old, Old Story” in a low voice as she rocked.
Before leaving the room that night, when I had been summoned to his bedside, she went to his bed and leaned over him and looked thoughtfully into his face. Then she gently touched it with her hand.
“How is my boy feeling now?” she asked.
“Oh, I'm better, mother,” he answered, cheerfully.