"Yes'm," Gracie said, thoughtfully, "only this once, when we did the hurting, I didn't know but it would be nice if we did the curing."
Just then, before Mrs. Brierly answered, the swooning girl revived, and opened for an instant her curious, olive-colored eyes. There was something in their look, perhaps, which went farther than Gracie's argument. At any rate, the lady said,—
"After all, James, you may as well leave us at home, and go at once for Dr. Cheever."
In five minutes more the carriage had stopped before a substantial, prosperous-looking house, the coachman had carried the poor, suffering little waif upstairs in his arms, and Mrs. Brierly had summoned Mrs. Morris, the good, motherly woman who had been Gracie's nurse, to her councils.
When Dr. Cheever came, he found his patient in clean, pure clothes, in a fresh, lovely room, waiting for him with a piteous, silent patience which it was pathetic to see. She suffered cruelly from her hurt, a compound fracture of the wrist, but she was not used to making moans or receiving sympathy; and it would have seemed to her a sort of sacrilege to cry out with human pain in this paradise to which she had been brought. One could only guess at her suffering by her compressed lips, with the white pallor round them, and the dark rings about her eyes.
Dr. Cheever listened to the account of the accident, while he dressed the poor hurt wrist with a gentleness which soothed the pain his touch caused. When he had done all he could, he followed Mrs. Brierly from the room.
"This will be an affair of several weeks," he said. "Would it not have been better to take the girl to one of the hospitals?"
"I thought so, at first; but, as Gracie said, we did the hurting, and it seemed right we should do the healing. Besides, the child's face interested me strangely, and I think it will not be a bad thing for us to have a little experience of this sort."
Meantime Ruthy lay and looked about her, as we have all fancied ourselves looking when, the death sleep over, we shall open our eyes to a new morning in some one of the Father's "many mansions." To a denizen of Moonstone Court this peaceful spot in which Ruthy found herself might well seem no unworthy heaven. The walls were tinted a soft, delicate gray, with blue borderings. On the drab carpet blue forget-me-nots blossomed. Blue ribbons tied back the white muslin curtains, and all the little china articles for use or ornament were blue and gilt.
Only one picture was in the room, and that hung over the mantel, directly opposite the pure white bed where Ruthy lay. It was a landscape by Gifford,—one of those glorified pictures of his which paint nature as only a poet sees her. Soft meadows sloped away into dreamy distance on one side, and, on the other, into the green enchantment of a wood a winding path beguiled you. In the centre, with her raised foot upon a stile by which she was about to cross into the peaceful meadows, a young girl stood with morning in her eyes. Just as she raised her foot she had paused and turned her head to look over her shoulder, as if she heard a voice calling her, and was hesitating whether to go on her appointed way or back into the green wood's enchantment. There was a wonderful suggestion for a story in the girl's face, her attitude, her questioning eyes. But if Ruthy felt this at all, it was very vaguely and unconsciously; yet the picture revealed to her a new world. Somewhere, then, meadows bloomed like these meadows, and woods were green, and light flickered through tender leaves, and over all the great, glorious blue sky arched and smiled. Somewhere! That must be country,—outside of the pavements and the tall, frowning houses. Oh, if she could go! Oh, but she would go! Let her wrist but get well, and then! She had never had these dreams before. The vision of the country, the true country, had never dawned on her till now. And yet she must have seen pictures of it in the windows of print shops; but her eyes had not been anointed, or Gifford had not painted the pictures.