I hugged these gracious words to my heart, and began work at once on a reclining-chair in which Haidee could rest during her convalescence, and the fashioning of two little crutches of cedar, the doctor having confided to me that when Haidee left her bed she would require the support of crutches for a week or two.
The second day, the message from the cedar room thrilled me: “Tell Mr. Dale that I have been lifted high on my pillows where I can watch Joey at work in the Dingle.” Later on the question came: “Joey is making something. What is it?”
Joey was passing through the kitchen when I received this message. I called to him: “What are you doing in the Dingle, Joey?”
“Pooh,” he said, puffing out his cheeks, “I’m not doing anything!”
“Nothing at all, Joey?”
“I’m just covering a cedar round for a—a hassock for her—Bell Brandon’s feet when she sits up. I’m covering it with the skin of that mink you trapped last fall.”
I duly reported this to Wanza. She looked at me, tossed her head, and went quickly back to the cedar room. I began to think Mrs. Olds’ pessimism was infecting her. Certainly my bright, insouciant Wanza seemed changed to me since her installation at Haidee’s bedside.
I received messages too, from the sick man, but disjointed, vague outbursts that showed his mind was still wandering in the realms of fantasy.
“Tell my host,” he begged Mrs. Olds, “that I’m a sick man—a very sick man. Tell him I say I’m a gentleman—a perfect gentleman. Tell him he’s a gentleman, too. Noblesse oblige—and all that sort of thing, you know.”
Mrs. Olds gathered that he was a mining man from Alaska, with interests in the Cœur d’Alenes, and that his name was Bailey. She had discovered a leather wallet in his coat pocket with the name in gold letters on the flap, and his linen was marked with a B. Pending absolute certainty that his name was Bailey, we all, with the exception of Mrs. Olds, continued to designate him “the big man”; and as days went on, Joey added to this and called him the big bad man, for his language waxed coarser. He was almost violent at times, and I was glad that the tiny corridor separated Haidee’s room from the one in which he lay.