The next moment Captain Burton strode in. He was not alone; accompanying him was a girl wrapped in a shabby gray cloak and with a warm scarf tied about her head partly concealing her face.
“Where is Polly? I must see her at once. We had a wreck on the road and a storm also delayed us. Bettina, will you and Alice please look after Miss Temple, Juliet Temple, and persuade her to eat dinner and go to bed. I’ll introduce you to each other more satisfactorily in the morning.”
If Bettina and Alice were startled and none too pleased by an unexpected guest under the present conditions, they were too kind to show their attitude, observing that the strange girl looked completely exhausted.
CHAPTER XI
Juliet Temple
“But, my dear, do you think this the proper time to introduce a stranger into our household?”
Mrs. Burton and Captain Burton were walking up and down outside Tahawus cabin the following morning. Wearing a sealskin coat and a small fur hat and muff, little was visible except Mrs. Burton’s eyes and the brilliant color in her cheeks wrought by the still, clear cold.
Captain Burton, who was a good deal older, was a middle-aged man with iron-gray hair and dark eyes; a handsome, erect figure, considerably taller than his companion.
“Why, no, I suppose not, Polly,” he returned, “but I explained to you the circumstances were exceptional. Here was a girl who had been living in the same boarding place with me, to whom I had been saying good-morning and good-evening for a number of weeks and now and then stopping to talk for a few moments, suddenly turned out into the world with no money and apparently no friends whom she could ask to aid her. I believe she has friends, but preferred being independent. Had I not assured her you were greatly in need of some one, she would not have come to you. She was careful to tell me that although she had studied nursing a short time, she was not a professional nurse, having given up her studies in order to take a position in Washington during the war, being in need of funds and unable to wait for her graduation.
“I convinced her that you were not so ill as to require professional care, but required some one to wait upon you, prepare special dishes and write letters. In fact, I even told her that a part of her work would be that of a maid, but that I was sure you would be extremely kind and that living with you was a pleasure, Polly, under almost any conditions.”
Mrs. Burton laughed.