“I can’t help crying,” said poor Grace, covering her face with both hands.
“You can help doing anything that is wrong,” said Polly gently. Then she brought a brush and comb, unpinned the frizzes, and laid them on the white toilet-table, and began to brush the soft, straight, shining hair.
“It wasn’t Bella at all,” sobbed Grace. “She didn’t want to do it, but I made her. Oh! I can’t give Bella up, Mrs. King.”
“You shall tell your Aunt all about it when you are better,” said Polly. “Now we must not talk about it. You are going to stay with me until your foot is well enough for you to be moved.”
“What, here in this house with you?” cried Grace, almost speechless with astonishment.
“Yes,” said Polly; “you see, you’ve given your poor foot a terrible wrench, and Dr. Phillips isn’t willing that you should be moved just yet. And he can come and see you so much easier here, Grace.”
“I shall get my Mamsie,” cried a small, determined voice.
“O Mrs. King!” Grace rolled her head on the pillow to look at her, “you don’t know how wicked I’ve been. You can’t know, or you never’d keep me here in all this world. Why, I disobeyed my aunt to come here.”
“Yes, I do know,” said Polly gravely. “I know it all. But I said we wouldn’t talk about it now.” Then Polly sat down on the edge of the bed in her beautiful reception-gown, and Grace felt too wicked to touch it with one finger, although she longed to; and Mrs. King held her hand, and told her stories about her own girlhood,—how the Peppers lived in the little brown house just around the lane, “where you will go when you are able to walk, dear;” and how Joel was the pastor of a big church in New York, and where Ben and Davie were; and how the dear mother had gone abroad with Father Fisher because he was tired and needed rest, and wanted to visit the hospitals again, and some foreign doctors; and then she told about Johnny, and the railroad accident that took his mother away to heaven, and how good Mrs. Fargo had adopted him for her very own boy, and they were there at Badgertown for the whole summer. And how Mr. Higby, in whose farmhouse the people were all carried who were hurt, had sold his farm, and was now their head gardener, and good Mrs. Higby was the housekeeper.