"Look me straight in the face, Eugene," said Miss Carmichael, with an effort. "Now, tell me, yes or no, nothing more, mind! Am I to go away?" As she asked the question, her face bent towards that of the sufferer, over which there passed a feeble flush, poor insufficient index of the great joy within, and then, as they met, his half-breathed answer was "No." She commanded silence, shook up his pillows, bathed his forehead, and in many ways displayed the stolen ring. He saw it, and, for the first time, perceived the change on his own hand. Then, she ordered him to go to sleep, as if he were a child, smoothing his hair and chanting in a low tone a baby's lullaby, until tired nature, with a heart at peace, became unconscious of the outer world and slumbered sweetly. On tiptoe, she stole to the door, and found many waiting in the hall for news. Proudly, she called the doctor in and showed him his patient, in his right mind and resting. "Thank God!" said the good man, "he is saved. We must come and relieve you now, Miss Carmichael." But she answered: "No, my place is here. If I want assistance I will call my uncle or Mr. Wilkinson." Doctor Halbert told the joyful news to the Squire and the assembled company. The clergymen would not arrive till tea time, so Mr. Carruthers, as the priest of the family, gathered the household together, and, in simple language but full of heart, thanked God for the young life preserved. The doctor went away home, but without Miss Fanny, and, as he drove off, remarked to the Squire, significantly: "There is no medicine in the world like love," a sentiment with which the Squire thoroughly agreed.
The evening was a very pleasant one. Messrs. Errol and Perrowne rejoiced to hear the good news from the sick room, and Mrs. Carmichael gave the former to understand, in a vague, yet to his intelligence perfectly comprehensible, way, that the assurance of her daughter's future happiness would remove a large obstacle in the way of her becoming the mistress of the manse. Mr. Perrowne appreciated Dr. Halbert's consideration in leaving his daughter at Bridesdale. The Du Plessis quartette were even farther advanced than the Carmichael four; and consequently Miss Graves was left to the entertainment of Mr. Douglas. The patient upstairs awoke, feeling very stiff and sore, but quite rational, and almost too happy to speak, which was a good thing, as his strength was that of a baby. He had to be lifted and turned, and propped up and let down, which the Squire generally did for him, under the head nurse's instructions, received from the doctor. Then he had to be fed, and begged to have his moustache curtailed, so as to facilitate the task. Two little hands, a comb, and a pair of scissors went to work, and, without annihilating the hirsute adornment, so trimmed it as to reveal a well-curved upper lip, hitherto almost invisible. It is astonishing what a sense of proprietorship this "barberous operation," as she termed it, developed in the heiress, who thought more of it than of her prospective thousands. It was past ten o'clock before she consented to yield her post to the devoted Wilkinson, who already began to look upon her as a sister, and to whom she gave directions, with all the gravity and superior dignity of an experienced nurse. The colonel would willingly have taken his turn in the sick room, but Mr. Terry, Mr. Douglas, and the Squire insisted on relieving him. Mr. Bangs was away with Ben Toner and two guns hunting for the Grinstun man. The watchers got along very well through the night, with the exception of the veteran, who was a little too liberal in the application of stimulants, which led to a reappearance of fever, and necessitated his calling in the aid of the ever-willing and kindly Honoria. Both the clergymen had volunteered to sit up with him, whom they were proud to call their friend, but it was not considered fair to impose upon them after the labours of their hardest day.
The morning saw Miss Carmichael in the sick room again, putting things to rights, purifying and beautifying it, as only a woman can, with the romantic and tearful, Shakespeare loving Tryphosa in her train. Poor little neglected Marjorie, who had performed for her young self an art of heroic sacrifice in handing over her own Eugene to her unworthy cousin, was allowed, a great and hitherto unheard of reward, to bring the patient an armful of flowers from the garden, gathering any blossoms she chose, to fill vases and slender button-hole glasses in every corner. She was even permitted to kiss Eugene, although she protested against the removal of that lovely moustache. She offered to bring Felina to lick off the stubble on her friend's chin, but that friend, in a wheezy whistling voice, begged that Maguffin might be substituted for the cat, in case pussy might scratch him. Maguffin came with the colonel's razors, and Marjorie looked on, while he gave the author of his present fortunes a clean shave, and made ironical remarks about moustache trimming. "Guess the man what trimmed yoh mustash fought he was a bahbah, sah?" The patient smiled seraphically, and whistled in his throat. "Never want to have a better, Maguffin."
"It's awful, Guff, isn't it?" asked Miss Thomas, and continued, "it quite gives me the horrows!"
"Dey's bahbahs and dey's bahbahs," replied the coloured gentlemen, "and I doan want ter blame a gennelum as cayn't help hisself."
The barbering completed, Marjorie junior was dismissed with her ally Guff, and the senior lady of that name reigned supreme. The eyes of the feeble invalid, whose heart had been hungering and thirsting for love during a month that had seemed a lifetime, followed her all over the room, and almost stopped beating when she went near the door. But she came back, and held that hot fevered hand on which her modest ring glistened, and cooled his brow, and made him take his sloppy food, and answered back in soft but cheery tones his deprecating whispers. She had him now safe, and would tyrannize over him, she said; till, spite of the weakness and the sharp pains, his eye began to twinkle with something of the old happy light that seemed to be of so long ago, and, smilingly, he murmured: "We are not ready for our graves yet." Miss Carmichael looked severe, and held up a warning finger. "Repeat that, Eugene, and I will send her to take care of you at once," she said; "that is, if she will leave her dear Mr. Douglas for a poor bed-ridden creature like you." As an affectionate salute followed these words, it may be presumed they were not so harsh as they sounded. The doctor came in time for breakfast, but, before partaking of that meal, he visited his patient, eased his bandages, looked to the wounds, and praised the nurse. "He could not be doing better," he said, as he cheerfully descended to the breakfast table.
The constable had respected the sanctity of the Sabbath, and was still in the kitchen, while his prisoners languished in the stables. Tryphena presided over the morning meal, at which Timotheus and Ben sat; and Tryphosa, who had just descended from her labours in the sick room, was giving them so touching and poetical an account of the invalid and his nurses that Timotheus began seriously to consider the propriety of having some frightful injury inflicted upon his own person. Mr. Toner related for the tenth time how the spurious doctor had cured him, and then proceeded to tell of Serlizer's wonderful skill in pulling through her shot-riddled old reprobate of a father, till "he was eenamost as good as new and a mighty sight heavier 'n he was, along o' the leaud in his old carkidge." Constable Rigby laughed at the wounds of the day, and characterized them as mere scratches, unworthy of mention in casualty despatches. "There was a man of ours, an acting corporal, called Brattles, in the melee at Inkerman, who broke the tip of his bagginet off in one Rooshian, and the butt of it in another. Then he had nothing to do but to club with what the French call the crosse. He forgot that he had not emptied his gun of the last charge so, just as he had floored his fourth Rooshian, the piece went off into his left breast, and the bullet ran clear down him and came out of his boot under the hollow of the left foot. Captain Clarkson thought he was done for; but Brattles asked him for two champagne corks, plugged up the incoming and the outgoing wounds with them, and stuck to it till the Rooshian bugles sounded the retreat. That I call a wound to speak of." Tryphena, who had listened to this story of her elderly admirer with becoming gravity, ventured to ask: "Do officers carry champagne corks about with them on the battle-field, Corporal Rigby?"
"Not all officers, Miss Hill. I never heard that Lord Raglan or Sir Colin did. But the young fellows, of course. How else could they blacken each other's faces?"
"Do they do that?"
"Regular. There was a subaltern they called Baby Appleby, he was so white-skinned and light-haired. Well, one night we had to turn out for an alarm in the dark, and charged two miles up to the rifle pits of the first line. When we came back, the colonel halted us for inspection before dismiss. When he came to Mr. Appleby, he turns to his captain and says: 'Where did you get this nigger in uniform, Ford?' The captain looked at him and roared, for poor Mr. Appleby was as black as Maguffin. The gentlemen had amused themselves corking him when he was asleep."