“Do you correspond with Miss Richards?” Adah suddenly asked, after a long reverie.
“No, she dreads writing letters above all things else, while I am a wretchedly negligent correspondent. I will send a note of introduction by you, though.”
“Please don’t,” and Adah spoke pleadingly, “I should have to give it if you did, and I’d rather go by myself. I know it would be better to have your influence, but it is a fancy of mine not to say that I ever knew you or any one at Spring Bank. I imagine this Dr. likes ’Lina, and they might question me of her. I could not say much that was good, and I should not like to say bad things of Hugh’s sister. Then, too, Miss Richards never need know of my past life unless I choose to let her, as I should have to do in telling her how I came at Spring Bank.”
Alice could understand Adah’s motives in part, and feeling sure that whatever she might say would be the truth, she did not press the matter, but suffered her to proceed in her own way. Now it was settled that Adah should go, she felt a restless, impatient desire to be gone, questioning the doctor closely with regard to Hugh, who it seemed to her, would never waken from the state of unconsciousness into which he had fallen, and from which he only rallied for an instant, just long enough to recognize his mother, but never Alice or herself, both of whom watched over him day and night, waiting anxiously for the first symptom which should herald his return to reason.
CHAPTER XXII.
WAKING TO CONSCIOUSNESS.
The warm still days of September were gone and a wild October storm was dying out in a gentle shower, when Hugh awoke from the sleep which had so long hung over him, and listened, with a vague kind of delicious happiness, to the lulling music of the rain falling so softly upon the window sill, and sifting through the long boughs of the trees, visible from where he lay. Gazing about him in a maze of perplexity, he wondered what had happened, or where he could be.
“I must have been sick,” he whispered, and pressing his hand to his head, he tried to recall and form into some definite shape the events which had seemed, and which seemed to him still, like so many phantoms of the brain.
Was it a dream—his mother’s tears, upon his face, his mother’s sobs beside him? Was it a dream that Adah had bent over him with words of tenderness, praying for him that he might not die, as he was sure he had heard her? And,—oh how Hugh started as he thought this;—Was it all a dream that the Golden Haired had been with him constantly?
No, that was not a dream, and Hugh lay panting on his pillow, as gleam after gleam flashed across his mind, bringing remembrance of the many times when another voice than Adah’s had asked that he might live, had pleaded as only Golden Hair could plead with God for him. She did not hate him, else she had not prayed, and words of thanksgiving were going up to Golden Hair’s God, when a footstep in the hall announced the approach of some one. Alice perhaps, and Hugh lay very still, with half shut eyes, until Muggins, instead of Alice, appeared. She had been deputed to watch by her master while the family were at dinner, pleased with the confidence reposed in her, determined strictly to obey Alice’s injunction to be very quiet, and not wake him if he were sleeping.
He was asleep, she said, as, standing on tiptoe, she scanned his face, in her own dialect, Muggins talked to herself about him as he lay there so still, not a muscle moving, save those about the corners of his mouth, where a smile was struggling for life, as Hugh listened to Mug’s remarks.