“He wished me to present them with his compliments. He thought they might please you.”
“Oh! they do, they do!” Maddy replied. “They almost make me well. Tell him how much I thank him, and like him too, though I never saw him.”
The doctor opened his lips to tell her she had seen him, but changed his mind ere the words were uttered. She might not think as well of Guy, he thought, and there was no harm in keeping it back.
So Maddy had no suspicion that the face she thought of so much belonged to Guy Remington. She had never seen him, of course; but she hoped she would some time, so as to thank him for his generosity to her grandfather and his kindness to herself. Then, as she remembered the message she had sent him, she began to think that it sounded too familiar, and said to the doctor:
“If you please, don’t tell Mr. Remington that I said I liked him—only that I thank him. He would think it queer for a poor girl like me to send such word to him. He is very rich, and handsome, and splendid, isn’t he?”
“Yes, Guy’s rich and handsome, and everybody likes him. We were in college together.”
“You were?” Maddy exclaimed. “Then you know him well, and Jessie, and you’ve been to Aikenside often? There’s nothing in the world I want so much as to go to Aikenside. They say it is so beautiful.”
“Maybe I’ll carry you up there some day when you are strong enough to ride,” the doctor answered, thinking of his light buggy at home, and wondering he had not used it more, instead of always riding on horseback.
Dr. Holbrook looked much older than he was, and to Maddy he seemed quite fatherly, so that the idea of riding with him, aside from the honor it might be to her, struck her much as riding with Farmer Green would have done. The doctor, too, imagined that his proposition was prompted solely from disinterested motives, but he found himself wondering how long it would be before Maddy would be able to ride a little distance, just over the hill and back. He was tiring her all out talking to her; but somehow it was very delightful there in that sick room, with the summer sunshine stealing through the window and falling upon the soft reddish-brown head resting on the pillows. Once he fixed those pillows, arranging them so nicely that grandma, who had come in from her hens and yeast cakes, declared “he was as handy as a woman,” and after receiving a few general directions with regard to the future, “guessed, if he wasn’t in a hurry, she’d leave him with Maddy a spell, as there were a few chores she must do.”
The doctor knew that at least a dozen individuals were waiting for him that moment; but still he was in no hurry, he said, and so for half an hour longer he sat there talking of Guy, and Jessie, and Aikenside, and wondering he had never before observed how very becoming a white wrapper was to sick girls like Maddy Clyde. Had he been asked the question, he could not have told whether his other patients were habited in buff, or brown, or tan color; but he knew all about Maddy’s garb, and thought the dainty frill around her slender throat the prettiest “puckered piece” that he had ever seen. How, then, was Dr. Holbrook losing his heart to that little girl of fourteen and a half? He did not think so. Indeed, he did not think anything about his heart, though thoughts of Maddy Clyde were pretty constantly with him, as after leaving her he paid his round of visits.