“I am so glad that Eunice is well,” she said to herself as she turned over the leaves. “She was at meeting, he said, and at the sewing-circle. Well, I am glad I came home all the same. And I can do something at ‘The Evidences’ while I am here.”
She glanced on a page or two, and in her interest in them she might have forgotten her haste, and lingered, had not the sound of approaching wheels disturbed the silence a little. She rose in time to see the leisurely approach of an old grey horse and an old-fashioned weather-stained chaise. They were familiar objects to her, and some of the pleasantest associations of her life were connected with them; but her heart beat hard and her face grew pale as she watched their slow approach.
“Dr Everett,” said she, “are you going to see Eunice?”
“Is it you, Fidelia? Are you just come home? No, I am not going to see Eunice. Is she not well? She’ll be glad to see you, sick or well,” added the doctor, as her other friend had done.
He was out of the chaise by this time, and offering his hand to help her over the crooked fence. But, instead of taking it, she gave one glance in the kind good face, and laid her own down on the rough bark of the cedar rail and burst out crying.
“It was full time for you to come home, I think, if that is the best greeting you have to give your friends. You’ve been overdoing, and have got nervous, I guess,” said the doctor, moving aside first one rail and then another from the fence, to make it easier for her to get over.
“Oh, no, Dr Everett, it is not that! Nervous indeed! I don’t know what it means. Only I’m so glad to get home, and—so glad that Eunice is well—”
If she had said another word she must have cried again.
“Well, never mind. Get into the chaise, and I’ll drive you home; and then I’ll see about Eunice and you too.”
It was ridiculous, Fidelia told herself. It had never happened in all her life before. But it was more than she could do for awhile to command her voice or stop her tears. The doctor made himself busy with the harness for a little, and, having left his whip behind him, he cut a switch from a hickory-tree beside the road; and by the time he was ready to get into the chaise Fidelia was herself again.