“And she will, you bet,” he horrified me by saying, as he came from a dark corner where he had been earning his pony.
“Oh, Paul! Where did you get that dreadful word?” I asked.
It was Fan who explained. That morning as she was entering Katy’s room, she saw Carl stoop to kiss the sick girl and heard Paul, who was as usual seated in his high chair, ask “Does you love her very much?”
“You bet,” was the answer inadvertently given; then, as he met Fan’s eyes full of reproach, Carl hastened to say, “I beg your pardon. You see we fellows use a lot of slang when alone, and it came from me unawares. I hope that you will excuse me, and that no harm is done.”
He was looking at Paul, who had caught the expression, as he caught everything out of the common, and who, in spite of our remonstrances, used it continually until Fan shut him up in the meal room, from which he emerged penitent and cured.
For weeks Katy hovered between life and death and went so far down the dark valley that we once thought she had left us forever. But she came back again, and after a few days it became evident that the crisis was past and she would live if her strength was sufficient for the struggle. For days she lay perfectly still with her eyes closed and her face as white as the pillow her shorn head rested upon. We had cut off her hair when her fever and delirium were at their height, for it seemed to trouble her, and she looked like a little child again, with her thin face and short curls clustering around her forehead. Suddenly one evening when we thought her sleeping, she opened her eyes and looked wonderingly at us. Then in a voice so low that we could scarcely hear her, she said, “What has happened, and why are you all in here, and why am I in bed? Am I very ill?” Then as her eyes fell upon Carl they lighted up with something of their old brilliancy, and her voice was steadier as she said, “Oh, Carl, you here? Yes, I remember now; but it seems so long ago.”
“Yes, darling, I am here,” Carl said, laying his hand on her white cheeks, which flushed quickly.
They were scarlet a moment later when Paul, who had climbed upon the bed, chimed in: “He’s been here ever so long and tissed you, oh so many times, I seen him, and once he cried when he so’t you was dead, and he’s goin’ to div me an ittle pony ’cause I prayed so much for God to make you well. I love Carl, don’t you?”
He had blurted out everything, and I glanced nervously at Carl to see how he would take it. He only laughed and said something about “Little pitchers telling all they knew,” and adding, “Why shouldn’t a fellow kiss his sister if he wants to?”
Instantly Katy’s eyes looked searchingly into his with an expression which told me that for her had commenced the old, old story, which has gone on since Adam and Eve first dwelt in Eden, and will go on as long as there is a tongue to tell it, or an ear to listen to it. But how was it with Carl, the young man of the world, with unbounded wealth at his command and his choice of any fair girl in the set to which he belonged? Did he really care for Katy, except as a brother might care for a sister as lovely as she was? and if he cared now, was he not of too fickle a nature to carry her image with him until time had developed her from a girl of fifteen into a full-grown woman?