Dr. Starkey's amazement surpassed Miss Bullins's, if possible. He first heard of the step Lilly had taken from Dr. Horton. He saw her himself a day or two later, on making his tri-weekly visit to the hospital, and commended her bravery and self-sacrificing spirit in phrases something less stilted than usual.
He could not entirely banish an uneasy feeling when he looked at the fresh young face, but he became tolerably reconciled to the situation when he saw what her energy and tenderness, in cooperation with Widow Gatchell's skill and experience, were accomplishing.
As for the girl herself, the days and nights passed so rapidly, making such demands upon body and mind, as to leave no time for regret. The scenes she witnessed effaced the past entirely for the time. In the midst of all the pain, and loathsomeness, and delirium, and death, she moved about, strong, gentle and self-contained, so self-contained that the vigilant eyes of the old nurse followed her in mute surprise.
"I never see nothin' like it," she said to Dr. Horton one day. "I've known her since she was little, an' I never would 'a' believed it, though I knew she'd changed. Why, she used to be so high-strung an' techy, like, an' now she's like a lamb."
On the tenth day after her coming, Dr. Horton in making his round entered an upper chamber, where Lilly was standing by one of the three beds it contained. She had just drawn the sheet over the faces of two who had died that morning—mother and child.
The dead woman was the deserted wife of a man who had left her a year before, young, weak and ignorant, to certain want and degradation.
"I cannot feel sorry," Lilly said. "It is so much better for them than what was left for them here."
Dr. Horton hardly seemed to hear her words. He was leaning wearily against a chair behind him; his eyes were dull, and his forehead contracted as if with physical suffering.
"You are ill!" she said, with a startled gesture.