Just then her eyes fell on a flower in his button-hole. He took it out and offered it to her.
“Oh, I thank you! I didn’t mean to ask for it. It will be company for me all day.”
“Are you quite alone from morning till night? Poor child! No wonder that the time seems long!”
“The nurse comes in as often as I need anything. But she thinks, they all think, it would be better if I were to go into one of the wards. I can work or read very little now, and the time would not seem so long with faces to see, even if they are sad faces.”
Mr Sherwood still lingered.
“Do your friends know that you are here? Do they know how ill you are?” he asked.
“Oh, yes; they know I am in the hospital. I have been waiting till I should be a little better, to write again to Effie. I must write soon. She will be anxious about me, I’m afraid.”
Her face looked very grave in the silence that followed. Mr Sherwood would fain have spoken some hopeful words, but somehow they did not come readily into his mind; and when the nurse at the moment came into the room, he withdrew.
But he did not forget the wan face of that suffering child. It followed him into the sunny street and into the quiet library. Alone and in company, all day long, he was haunted by the wistful eyes of that patient girl as no sorrowful sight had ever haunted him before.
Mr Sherwood was not what could be called a benevolent man, a lover of his kind. He enjoyed doing a kind act when it came in his way—as who does not? But that he should go out of his way to do kind things for people in whom he had no special interest, only that they were in trouble and needed help, he had not thought his duty. He had had troubles of his own to bear, but they had not been of a kind that other people could help much. At any rate, people had not helped him; he had not sought help. Possibly he would have resented the idea of any one’s bearing his burdens for him, and no doubt he thought that in this sad, disappointing world, each one must bear his own. He had called at the hospital because Miss Gertrude had asked him to call, and hoping that he should find the little nurse already safe at home with her friends; but however this might be, he had no thought of anything but pleasing his little cousin in the matter.