Rob Clark sat upright, his whole face changing, both in color and expression.
“Miss Ellen Deal, you are the best tonic as well as the best nurse I have ever run across. I believe I would have a fighting chance in more ways than one if you were going to stay in my neighborhood until I do get well.”
He had spoken spontaneously and without thinking beforehand. Of course there had been no serious meaning in his words.
But Ellen continued to stand holding the tray and looking at him.
“I am seriously considering staying with you, if you will allow me,” she answered so unexpectedly, that her companion could only stare at her incredulously. “In the last few days I have decided that there is no reason why you should not recover if the right care is taken of you. But I doubt Marta’s ability. She is too untrained and too undisciplined. I am glad she is to come into our Camp Fire circle, where she ought to learn a great deal that will be valuable for her. But it will take some time.”
Robert Clark reached up and took the tray away from Ellen.
“Please sit down again for a moment,” he asked, pointing to the camp chair she had just occupied.
“What you have just said does me more good than you imagine. My sister and I haven’t many friends; we have always been poor, and an ancestry that has not made good in the last generation does not count for much nowaday—not even in the South. Then, you are very kind to try to brace me up; but a fellow is a quitter who breaks down in his early twenties and has to live on the money a few friends and relations furnish him and his sister. So you see, even if I would give my right hand to have you remain with us until you get really tired, why we just can’t afford it. A nurse like you. Miss Deal, is a luxury no man is rich enough to deserve.”
Although Ellen had sat down as her companion requested, she did not seem to be paying much attention to his words. But, at the last sentence, she frowned.
“Don’t be absurd. Of course, I know you can’t afford the expense of a trained nurse or you would have had one. You haven’t even a cook, and a cook may be more important than a nurse in your present condition. But I know how to cook as well as nurse. I have known ever since I was a little girl. New England girls are brought up sensibly. And I am not a trained nurse. At least I am not a graduate. I have simply been staying out here in the West as a guest of Mrs. Burton until I got over a slight breakdown. There was nothing the matter with me but being tired, and I feel splendid now.”