For a moment Guy regarded his friend attentively, noticing now that extra care had been bestowed upon his toilet, that the collar was fresh from the laundry, and the new cravat tied in a most unexceptionable manner, instead of being twisted into a hard knot, with the ends looking as if they had been chewed.
“Doc,” he said, when his survey was completed, “how old are you—twenty-five or twenty-six?”
“Twenty-five—just your age—why?” and the doctor looked with an expression so wholly innocent of Guy’s real meaning that the latter, instead of telling why, replied:
“Oh! nothing; only I was wondering if you would do to be my father. Agnes, I verily believe, is more than half in love with you; but, on the whole, I would not like to be your son; so I guess you’d better take some one younger—say Jessie. You are only eighteen years her senior.”
The doctor stared at him amazed, and when he had finished said with the utmost candor: “What has that to do with Madeline? I thought we were talking of her.” “Innocent as the newly-born babe,” was Guy’s mental comment, as he congratulated himself on his larger and more varied experience.
And truly Dr. Holbrook was as simple-hearted as a child, never dreaming of Guy’s meaning, or that any emotion save a perfectly proper one had a lodgment in his breast as he drove down to Honedale, guarding carefully Guy’s bouquet, and wishing he knew just what he ought to say when he presented it.
Maddy had gained rapidly the last three days. Good nursing and the doctor’s medicines were working miracles, and on the morning when the doctor, with Guy’s bouquet, was riding rapidly toward Honedale, she was feeling so much better that in view of his coming she asked if she could not be permitted to receive him sitting in the rocking-chair, instead of lying there in bed, and when this plan was vetoed as utterly impossible, she asked, anxiously:
“And must I see him in this nightgown? Can’t I have on my pink gingham wrapper?”
Hitherto Maddy had been too sick to care at all about her personal appearance, but it was different now. She did care, and thoughts of meeting again the handsome, stylish-looking man who had asked her to conjugate amo and whom she fully believed to be Dr. Holbrook, made her rather nervous. Dim remembrances she had of some one gliding in and out, and when the pain and noise in her head was at its highest, a hand, large, and, oh! so cool had been laid upon her temples, quieting their throbbings and making the blood course less madly through the swollen veins. They had told her how kind, how attentive he had been, and to herself she had said: “He’s sorry about that certificate. He wishes to show me that he did not mean to be unkind. Yes; I forgive him: for I really was very stupid that afternoon.”
And so, in a most forgiving frame of mind, Maddy submitted to the snowy robe which grandma brought in place of the coveted gingham wrapper, and which became her well, with its daintily-crimped ruffles about the neck and wrists. Those wrists and hands! How white and small they had grown! and Maddy sighed, as her grandmother buttoned together the wristbands, to see how loose it was.