"She has broken her collar-bone and is considerably bruised, but I think that is the worst. Here comes the doctor at last."
Doctor Fenn was an old army-surgeon who had seen hard service in field and hospital. He was a thorough New Englander, in birth and breeding, and his greeting of "W—a—ll, my girl?" sounded homelike and natural to Marion's Green Mountain ear. Somewhat rough-looking at the first glance, no woman could be gentler or more delicate in a sickroom, and his steady, firm hand was reassuring in itself.
"Wall," said Doctor Fenn after he had concluded his examination, "it isn't as bad as it might be, considering. The right collar-bone is the only one broken, but there are a good many sprains and bruises, and it is possible there may be some internal injury. You must be a pretty good hand at falling down, Marion, to get off with so little damage."
"You don't think I shall die, then?" said Marion.
"Not this time, I think. But I can tell better how you are in a day or two; and unless there is more the matter than I see now, I think six weeks or so in bed will probably be the worst of it. Now, Mr. Van Alstine, we will put this bone to rights, and then we must keep all quiet about our patient, and perhaps she may get some sleep."
But Marion got very little sleep for that or several succeeding nights. The scratches on her face and arms inflamed and were very painful. She was bruised and strained all over, and the constrained position was almost intolerably irksome to one who had never been confined to her bed a day in her life. Even if her right arm had not been bound close to her side, her wrists had been so stretched and sprained in her desperate grasp of the old hemlock, that she had almost no use of her hands, and was dependent on others for all sorts of personal offices.
It was a hard trial; nor was her illness the only trouble which befel the family at this time. Everybody knows that, as the old negro said, "single misfortunes never come alone." The day after Marion's accident, Mr. Van Alstine scalded his hand with steam in the tannery, and, to crown all, Harry was taken with a low, obstinate intermittent fever which seemed to defy all Doctor Fenn's skill, and kept the poor boy utterly miserable—too sick to leave his bed every other day, and just able to crawl down-stairs and lie on the sofa on what were called by courtesy his "well days."
If Marion had been as impatient under real troubles as she had often been under fancied grievances, she would have been a troublesome patient to manage. But either there had been a great change, or else suffering had developed the real force of character which lay concealed under a mask of weak self-indulgence. She never fretted and hardly ever complained, and made no trouble that she could help. Both Mrs. Andrews, who had seen a great deal of severe sickness, and Doctor Fenn declared they never had a more reasonable patient, and Maggy drew the most dismal auguries from the change in Marion.
"But she doesn't get on quite as well as I could wish, or as I think she ought to," said the doctor in a conference with her mother. "There's a want of elasticity that I don't like to see in one so young. I can't help thinking that she has got something on her mind."
"The same thing has occurred to me," said Mrs. Andrews. "She seems so entirely changed. You must have observed it, Eileen."