It was Sam’s nature to trust everybody, and three or four at once volunteered to see to his grocery, “And we’ll build you up a good business, too, and not steal more than half the plunder,” they said. As a result of this Sam left his grocery in charge of his friends, with the injunction that old Miss Bower, who lost four boys in the war, should have good measure, and a cent a pound less for her groceries than the usual price, and that old man Coulter, who lost both his legs at Antietam was to have his tobacco free, if he didn’t call for it too often and in too large quantities. The three who received these and similar orders looked wonderingly at each other, thinking they were just beginning to know how big and generous a heart there was in this great, awkward fellow, who was installed in Jack’s sick-room late on Thanksgiving night.
The day had been a sad one at The Elms. With her New England ideas and habits Norah had declared there should be at least a cracker pudding and a chicken pie; it wouldn’t be worth while to give thanks without as much as that. So, between her efforts at cleaning and scrubbing the floor and planing the cooking-table, she managed these delicacies; but the turkey, to whom so many promises of decapitation had been made by Phyllis remained in his coop, waiting for a future day when the appetites of the family would be better than they were now.
Paul was the only one who enjoyed the dinner. The others were thinking sadly how changed was the day from what they had anticipated. Miss Errington was especially quiet and somber, with the same look on her face which it had worn since her brother said to her, “I am to marry Fanny Hathern.” She had gone out that morning after breakfast, and enquiring her way to the telegraph office had sent a cablegram to her brother’s address in London. It was directed to Fanny, and read: “The Elms. Thanksgiving morning. To Mrs. G. W. Errington. Mr. Fullerton is here, and dangerously ill with brain fever. Recovery doubtful. C. Errington.”
She knew that she possibly stretched a point in saying “Recovery doubtful,” although she tried to persuade herself that she did not. A man as strong and fullblooded as Mr. Fullerton was apt to die when smitten with fever, she reasoned, and she experienced a kind of pleasure in thinking how this first news from home would affect her brother’s wife. “She deserves it, and worse,” she reflected, as she walked back to The Elms, where she found Annie down stairs.
“I could not stay in bed any longer,” she said, “and I wanted to see Jack.”
He was lying very quiet and seemed to be asleep when she went in and sat down beside him. But he soon grew restless, and his eyes, bright with fever, fixed themselves curiously upon her.
“Annie-mother,” he said, reaching out his hand and taking hers in it, “I am glad you have come. You almost make me know what I am trying to remember and can’t. Was it the house on The Plateau, and is Norah up there? I am sure I have heard her voice, and another strange one. The house must be full of people. Send them away. They mustn’t know what it is I can’t recall.” After that his mind began to wander on other subjects,—mostly debts, which he said he must see to.
“What debts?” Annie asked, but he only replied, “They make my head ache so. I was never in debt before.”
“I think it was for furnishing his house,” Annie said in a whisper to Miss Errington, who had stepped to the room for the first time.
Jack saw her and his eyes glared wildly as, clutching Annie’s hand, he whispered, “Who is that tall woman? Where have I seen her? Looks like a general in petticoats, and, oh-h, Annie, she is like him; send her away.”