So Johnny arranged the bell-pull, while Aunt Mercy and Tiny tacked up green paper shades, and white muslin curtains, to the two windows and spread the straw mattress, first with three or four folded “comfortables,” and then with lavender-scented sheets and a white bed-spread, and put a clean cover on the bureau, and on the little one-legged and three-footed table which was to stand by the bed. Two or three braided rugs were laid upon the floor, and then, when Tiny had decorated the bureau with a bunch of the brightest flowers she could find, the room was all ready, “and too lovely for anything,” as Tiny said.
Jim was afraid, at first, that his new friends would not understand why he could not, try as he might, find voice to say anything, when Uncle Isaac and David carried him upstairs, and gently placed him on the white bed. There was a lump in his throat which would not let any words pass it, but he raised his eyes to Aunt Mercy’s face, with a look which somehow made her stroke his hot forehead with her soft, cool hands, and say tenderly,—
“There, my dear, thee is safe and at home, and all thee has to do is to lie here and get well as fast as thee can!”
He did it, and with everything to help forward his recovery, his strong young frame soon shook off disease and languor.
Three weeks after he came to the farm, he was “all about again,” as Aunt Mercy said, and so eager for work, that he soon left David little to do. And what famous help he was about the “mission!” He seemed to have an especial faculty for finding the places where shy mosses and delicate wild-flowers hid; he had “spotted” every nut tree within five miles before the nuts were ripe, and he packed their various findings in a way which excited wonder and admiration.