“Not really?” protested Hannah. “Alice swore she knew one girl called Dusk Delight Dinwiddie, because she was born at twilight and they thought she was delightful. That was what we were laughing over when Dr. Helen came in, and she stopped long enough to tell us of a college acquaintance of hers named Revelation Rasmussen, who married Will Kelly, and an Ella G. Gray whom they nick-named ‘Country Churchyard’!”
“What jolly times you girls must be having,” said Mrs. Tracy. “You see, I know all about you. Dr. Helen–I began calling her Dr. Smith, but I couldn’t keep it up–has told me all sorts of interesting stories, and those about you four are the most entertaining. I listen to all your doings as though you were characters in a serial story. You don’t mind, I hope?”
“Mind? Of course not. We aren’t story-book 233 girls at all, though, but very flesh-and-bloody! Why didn’t Dr. Helen tell us about you before, and let us come to see you?”
“It has only been a little while that I have felt like seeing people, and when she suggested sending her daughter, I told her not to, for I didn’t want your fun interrupted. And I remember when I was your age, I dreaded calling on sick people. I always felt as though I ought to carry them tracts or–”
“Wine jelly,” finished Hannah. “Yes, that’s the way I felt a little, to-day. I was afraid I’d not be able to think of anything to say, and I planned to offer to read to you.”
“That was very good of you, but I’ve read and been read to so much that I’m glad of other occupations. The nurse exhausted the library’s resources. Then I took up picture puzzles. Mr. Tracy brings them out to me every week, but we both get cross about them because they interest us so that we spend half his precious day over them! Just now I am trying to teach myself to knit, out of a book, and I’m in a dreadful tangle. I think the chamber-maid knows how, and I mean to ask her.”
“O, let me bring Frieda in to show you. She knows how to do all such things, and would dearly love to. And you ought to meet all your story characters and see if we are like what you imagined. I must go now, for Dr. Helen expressly said that 234 I wasn’t to stay long, and I know you are tired.”
“I’ll soon be rested, and it has been such fun to have you. Wait! Let me give you one of my roses!”
Hannah took the rose, and then put out her hand for good-by. There was something so sweet and winning about the white little face, where tired lines were showing in spite of the smile, that Hannah impulsively bent over and kissed it; and then, promising to come next day with Frieda, she flew down the corridor and out into the street, entirely recovered from her ennui of the morning.
Frieda, meanwhile, was following minute directions which led her at last to a tiny cottage by the riverside. She went up the walk and rapped on the door. No one answered. A second attempt was as unsuccessful, and Frieda turned away, half ready to give up this strange errand which she did not quite fancy. Dr. Helen had asked her to go to this house and buy flowers! It did not look like a florist’s. There was a garden behind the house, though. She decided to go back there before giving up. Dr. Helen usually was wise.