But I refused to hush.
“You must not!” I cried. “You shall not! Why did you do it? They could have found a nurse, if one was needed. Bayliss—”
“Doctor Bayliss does not know. If he did I should not care. As for the others—” she colored, slightly,
“Well, I told the concierge that you were my uncle. It was only a white lie; you used to say you were, you know.”
“Say! Oh, Frances, for your own sake, please—”
“Hush! Do you suppose,” her cheeks reddened and her eyes flashed as I had seen them flash before, “do you suppose I would go away and leave you now? Now, when you are hurt and ill and—and—after all that you have done! After I treated you as I did! Oh, let me do something! Let me do a little, the veriest little in return. I—Oh, stop! stop! What are you doing?”
I suppose I was trying to sit up; I remember raising myself on my elbow. Then came the pain again, the throbbing in my head and the agonizing pain in my side. And after that there is another long interval in my recollections.
For a week—of course I did not know it was a week then—my memories consist only of a series of flashes like the memory of the hours immediately following the accident. I remember people talking, but not what they said; I remember her voice, or I think I do, and the touch of her hand on my forehead. And afterward, other voices, Hephzy's in particular. But when I came to myself, weak and shaky, but to remain myself for good and all, Hephzy—the real Hephzy—was in the room with me.
Even then they would not let me ask questions. Another day dragged by before I was permitted to do that. Then Hephzy told me I had a cracked rib and a variety of assorted bruises, that I had suffered slight concussion of the brain, and that my immediate job was to behave myself and get well.
“Land sakes!” she exclaimed, “there was a time when I thought you never was goin' to get well. Hour after hour I've set here and listened to your gabblin' away about everything under the sun and nothin' in particular, as crazy as a kitten in a patch of catnip, and thought and thought, what should I do, what SHOULD I do. And now I KNOW what I'm goin' to do. I'm goin' to keep you in that bed till you're strong and well enough to get out of it, if I have to sit on you to hold you down. And I'm no hummin'-bird when it comes to perchin', either.”