"It would not be fair to take hope from me," she said. "That's not going to help Dick. Perhaps, in ten years, if everything fails, I might believe you. But we're never going to cease believing and trying."
"You are a brave woman," he said.
"Brave! Why, I am not brave enough to do without hope," she answered. "If I once believed that Dick would never walk again, I would not know how to face life. But he will walk—I know it!"
The doctor went back to Perth when it was safe to leave Dick to the care of the two nurses—experienced, matter-of-fact women, who settled down to the care of an incurable case with a calm professional certainty as to the future that often goaded their patient's mother to the limit of endurance; a fact which they never suspected. Dick himself gave little trouble. He was very weak; so tired that it was happiness to lie still, now that there was no longer pain to dread. "I'm jolly lazy," he said—"but if I move I know the pain will come back, so I don't try." He did not dream that movement was impossible.
Gradually his clean youth triumphed over the minor injuries, and his wounds healed quickly. The Westown doctor, who came out twice weekly, professed himself delighted with him; the nurses allowed themselves a touch of pride over his fast-disappearing scars. A faint tinge of colour crept back into his white face. He had no inclination but to lie still; but interest in the outer world awoke once more, and he liked to hear the station talk; the daily stories of work among the cattle—to hear what horses were in use, and how the young ones were shaping in their work. His room, as he grew stronger, became a kind of centre for the household, and everybody drifted there throughout the day—Bobby and the twinses, with queer offerings of flowers and such curiosities as stick insects and blue-tongued lizards; Mr. Warner solemnly asking advice on station matters; Macleay, the storekeeper, with dry Scots stories. Each evening the three jackeroos came to him with the history of the day; tip-toeing at first, with exaggerated caution, and gradually forgetting it, at Dick's quick questions, so that the sickroom would become a Babel of cheery voices, until the nurse on duty would plead over-excitement for her patient, and turn them all out. Dick hated to see them go, although he would be too tired to want them to stay. "Makes you nearly forget you're lying on your back," he would say.
But there were long hours when he did not seem to want to talk; lying quietly, his eyes always on the patch of sky outside his window, where the gum leaves made a wavering pattern against the blue. Hours when he wanted nothing, he said; neither reading nor stories, nor any of the hundred devices with which they sought to make his day less long. What did he think of? his mother wondered wretchedly, watching the still face against the white pillows. Were there fears in his brave heart? Unknown terrors of the future, that he would not tell even to her? She would ask him if he were in pain, and he would shake his head with a little smile—the smile that never failed for her. But if there were times when Mrs. Lester's own courage wavered, it was in those quiet hours when something beyond her knowledge seemed to be drawing Dick away from her into a silence where she might not enter.
One shadow haunted the verandah outside the room—Merle, white-faced and wretched, haunted by self-reproach too agonising for a child's mind. Whatever bitterness might have been in Dick's mother vanished at the dumb misery in her eyes. She put her arm about the little girl, holding her tightly, while Merle clung to her, shaken with dry sobs.
"I wish I was dead!" she had gasped.
"You mustn't say that," Mrs. Lester said. "Dick would hate to hear you. And you must help us to get him well!"
"But they say he'll never be well!"