Grace looked up at him. "I am the cause of her illness," she said, quietly. "I have never been kind to her, or taken any notice of her. I have come through her room, using it for a passage when I was breaking bounds, and have frightened her—to death."
The doctor looked at her under his bushy eyebrows. "That may all be so!" he said. "All the same, you may now have the chance of saving her life. Stay by her, that's all I have to say to you."
"And what have you to say to me, doctor?" asked Miss Parkins. "I have a great responsibility. Lobelia will inherit a large fortune if she lives. She has had everything that money—"
"You can go home!" said Doctor Hendon, with a sudden movement suggestive of biting. "Go home, and stay there—I—mean, have things ready for her when she is ready for a change. Good morning! Ya-ouw!" this last was a manner of snarl with which he favoured Miss Parkins as he trotted out of the room. The lady stared after him. "Is he a little touched?" she asked. "He doesn't seem quite sane."
Miss Russell assured her that Doctor Hendon was eminently sane, and got her out of the room as soon as possible.
Grace remained, and hour by hour kept her watch at the sick girl's pillow, laying her magic touch on the burning brow, singing the soft songs that seemed more than anything else to soothe the sufferer. So sitting, hour by hour, day after day, the old life seemed to slip away from Grace Wolfe. She felt it going, felt the change coming on spirit and thought, but made no effort to hinder the change. All the restlessness, the wild longing for freedom, the beating her head against the friendly bars,—where was it now? She was content to sit here, watching with the nurse the changes that came over the face of their patient. They talked together in low voices which soothed rather than disturbed; one asking, the other relating, the woman of experience and the eager girl exchanged thoughts and confidences. Many times in the day the girls came to the door, Peggy and the Owls, and now and then an anxious, frightened freshman. Peggy had longed to assist in the nursing, but she had too heavy a hand, and hers was not the gift. Gertrude Merryweather had it, and she sometimes took Grace's place, and sent her down for a breath of fresh air and a run with Bertha or Peggy on the lawn. Grace went obediently, for she knew she must keep up her strength; but she was always back again at the first possible instant, and her thoughts never seemed to go with her, but stayed at her post.
"My dear," said Miss Russell once, "I cannot let you wear yourself out. Let Gertrude watch to-night while Miss Carter rests!" But Grace only said, "I'd give my life if I could, Miss Russell. She's going to get well if my life can do it!" and Miss Russell, looking into the blue eyes and meeting the spirit of resolution that shone there, could only kiss the girl's cheek and pass on.
Lobelia was very ill, and a shadow hung over the whole school. Lessons went on as usual, but the girls spoke low in their recitations, and there was an unconscious hurry in both teachers and pupils, all anxious to get through, to ask and hear the last tidings from the sickroom. In those days, too, teachers and pupils learned to know each other as never before. The grave women who cared so much—so strangely much, it often seemed—whether a lesson were well or ill learned, who made such a fuss about trifles, and set such hard tasks, and made such unreasonable rules, behold! they were just as anxious and troubled as if Lobelia had been one of their own number, instead of the most insignificant freshman in the whole school. Miss Boyle was not simply a mathematical machine, Rose Barclay found out. She really cared about them, cared enough to call them into her room, and want to hear all about that last walk, when Peggy had killed the rattlesnake,—oh, how brave Peggy had been,—and how poor Lobelia had seen it, too, and with her inborn terror of snakes had perhaps got the first panic that, after brooding and brooding, and being added to the terror by nights, had ended in this.
Miss Pugsley was gone. Her departure had hardly been noticed, was well-nigh forgotten by this time; but Colney Hatch found Miss Mink sniffing mouse-like sniffs in a corner, and wept with her, and offered her a live bat that she had just caught, by way of consolation. But their tears were for Grace, for they hardly knew Lobelia save by sight.
As for Miss Russell and Emily Cortlandt, they were the life and stay of the school in these days. Steadfast and cheerful, always hopeful, bringing forward every favourable symptom and sharing it with the whole school; not a girl of all the seventy-odd who did not feel their sympathy and friendship like strong hands ready to take theirs and uphold them.