“Markham—an old man who lives in Honedale. You never knew him, of course.”
“Certainly not—how could I?” Agnes replied, as she took her seat at the tea-table. But her white fingers trembled as she handled the china and silver, and for once she was glad when the doctor took his leave, and she was alone with Jessie.
“What was the girl’s name?” she asked; “the one you went to see?”
“Maddy, mother—Madeline Clyde. She’s so pretty. I’m going to see her again. May I?”
Agnes did not reply directly, but continued to question the child with regard to the cottage which Jessie thought so funny, slanting way back, she said, so that the roof on one side almost touched the ground. The window panes, too, were so very tiny, and the room where Maddy lay sick was small and low.
“Yes, yes, I know,” Agnes said at last, impatiently, for she was tired of hearing of the cottage whose humble exterior and interior she knew so much better than Jessie herself.
But this was not to be divulged; for surely the haughty Agnes Remington, who, in Aikenside was looked upon with envy, could have nothing in common with the red cottage or its inmates. So when Jessie asked again if she could not visit Maddy on the morrow, she answered decidedly, “No, daughter, I do not wish you to associate with such people;” and when Jessie insisted on knowing why she must not associate with such people as Maddy Clyde, the answer was, “Because you are a Remington;” and as if this of itself were an unanswerable objection, Agnes sent her child from her, refusing to talk longer on a subject so disagreeable to her and so suggestive of the past. It was in vain that Jessie, and even Guy himself, tried to revoke the decision. Jessie should not be permitted to come in contact with that kind of people, she said, or incur the risk of catching that dreadful fever.
So day after day, while life and health were slowly throbbing through her veins, Maddy waited and longed for the little girl whose one visit to her sick-room seemed so much like a dream. From her grandfather she had heard the good news of Guy Remington’s generosity, and that, quite as much as Dr. Holbrook’s medicines, helped to bring the color back to her cheek, and the brightness to her eyes.
She had been asleep the first time the doctor came after the occasion of Jessie’s visit, and as sleep, he said, would do her more good than anything he might prescribe, he did not waken her; but for a long time, as it seemed to Grandma Markham, who stood a very little in awe of the Boston doctor, he watched her as she slept, now clasping the blue-veined wrist as he felt for the pulse, and now wiping from her forehead the drops of sweat, or pushing back her soft, damp hair. It would be three days before he could see her again, for a sick father in Cambridge needed his attention, and after numerous directions as to the administering of sundry powders and pills, he left her, feeling that the next three days would be long ones to him. Dr. Holbrook did not stop to analyze the nature of his interest in Maddy Clyde—an interest so different from any he had ever felt before for his patients; and even if he had sought to solve the riddle, he would have said that the knowing how he had wronged her was the sole cause of his thinking far more of her and of her case than of all the other patients on his list. Dr. Holbrook was a handsome man, a thorough scholar, and a most skillful physician; but he was no ladies’ man, and his language and manners were oftentimes abrupt, even when both were prompted by the utmost kindness of heart. In his organization, too, there was not a quick perception of what would be exactly appropriate, and when, on his return from Cambridge, he was about starting to visit Maddy again, he puzzled his brains until they ached with wondering what he could do to give her a pleasant surprise and show that he was not so formidable a personage as her past experience might lead her to think.
“If I could only take her something,” he said, glancing ruefully around his office. “Now, if she were Jessie, nuts and raisins might answer—but she must not eat such trash as that;” and he set himself to think again, just as Guy Remington drove up, bearing in his hand a most exquisite bouquet, whose fragrance filled the office at once, and whose beauty elicited an exclamation of delight even from the matter-of-fact Dr. Holbrook.