Miss Baker fled, and Mrs. Maitland apparently forgot her. When the doctor came, however, she roused herself to say: "I won't have that fool girl buzzing round. I don't like all this highfalootin' business of nurses, anyhow. They are nothing but foolish expense." Perhaps that last word stirred some memory, for she added abruptly: "Nannie, bring me that—that picture you have in the parlor. The Virgin Mary, you know. Rags of popery, but I want to look at it. No; I can't pay $5,000 for 14 X 18 inches of old master, and hire nurses to curl my hair, too!" But nobody smiled at her joke.
When Nannie brought the picture, she bade her put it on a chair by the bedside, and sometimes the two girls saw her look at it intently. "I think she likes the child," Elizabeth said, in a low voice; but Nannie sighed, and said, "No; she is provoked because Blair was extravagant." After Miss Baker's banishment, Elizabeth did most of the waiting on her, for Nannie's anxious timidity made her awkward to the point of being, as Mrs. Maitland expressed it, wearily, "more bother than she was worth." Once she asked where Blair was, and Elizabeth said that nobody knew. "He heard of some business opening, Mrs. Maitland, and went East to see about it."
"Went East? What did he go East for? He's got a business opening at home, right under his nose," she said, thickly.
After that she did not ask for him. But from her bed in her own room she could see the dining-room door, and she lay there watching it, with expectation smoldering in her half-shut eyes. Once, furtively, when no one was looking, she lifted the hem of the sheet with her fumbling right hand and wiped her eyes. For the next few days she gained, and lost, and gained again. There were recurrent periods of lucidity, followed by the terrible childishness that had been the first indication of her condition. At the end of the next week she suddenly said, in a loud voice, "I won't stay in bed!" And despite Nannie's pleadings, and Miss Baker's agitated flutterings, she got up, and shuffled into the dining-room; she stood there, clutching with her uninjured hand a gray blanket that was huddled around her shoulders. Her hair was hanging in limp, disordered locks about her face, which had fallen away to the point of emaciation. She was leaning against the table, her knees shaking with weakness. But it was evident that her mind was quite clear. "Bed is a place to die in," she said; "I'm well. Let me alone. I shall stay here." She managed to get over to her desk, and sank into the revolving chair with a sigh of relief. "Ah!" she said, "I'm getting out of the woods. Harris! Bring me something to eat." But when the food was put before her, she could not touch it.
Robert Ferguson, who almost lived at the Maitland house that week, told her, soothingly, that she really ought to go back to bed, at which she laughed with rough goodnature. "Don't talk baby-talk. I'm getting well. But I've been sick; I've had a scare; so I'm going to write a letter, in case—Or here, you write it for me."
"To Blair?" he said, as he took his pen out of his pocket.
"Blair? No! To David Richie about that money. Don't you remember I told you I was going to give him a lot of money for a hospital? That I was going to get a certificate of deposit"—her voice wavered and she seemed to doze. A moment later, when her mind cleared again, her superintendent said, with some effort: "Aren't you going to do something for Blair? You will get well, I'm sure, but—in case—Your will isn't fair to the boy; you ought to do something for him."
Instantly she was alert: "I have. I've done the best thing in the world for him; I've thrown him on his own legs! As for getting well, of course I'm going to get well. But if I didn't, everything is closed up; my will's made; Blair is sure of poverty. Well; I guess I won't have you write to David to-day; I'm tired. When I'm out again, I'll tell Howe to draw up a paper telling him just what the duties of a trustee are…. Why don't you … why don't you marry his mother, and be done with it? I hate to see a man and woman shilly-shally."
"She won't have me," he said, good-naturedly; in his anxiety he was willing to let her talk of anything, merely to amuse her.
"Well, she's a nice woman," Sarah Maitland said; "and a good woman; I was afraid you were doing the shilly-shallying. And any man who would hesitate to take her, isn't fit to black her boots. Friend Ferguson, I have a contempt for a man who is more particular than his Creator." Robert Ferguson wondered what she was driving at, but he would not bother her by a question.