She was introducing herself to him, and he took her hand and kept it while he replied: “Yes, I am Paul Ralston, and you are Elithe. I am glad you are better. You have been very ill.”
“Ill!” Elithe repeated, with a startled look in her eyes, which went rapidly around the room, taking in all its appointments and their meaning. “I didn’t know I was ill. How long is it, and where is auntie?”
“Here, child,” and Miss Hansford appeared with the lemonade, finding Paul holding Elithe’s hand in one of his and smoothing her hair with the other.
He was a natural nurse, and she looked and seemed so like a child in her helplessness that he caressed her as if she were one, and held the glass to her lips while she drank eagerly. She was decidedly better, but a good deal bewildered with regard to her illness, which she could not understand.
“Don’t try to now. We’ll talk of it by and by when you are stronger,” Paul said, as he bade her good-bye and went below, followed by Miss Hansford.
During the days and nights she had watched by Elithe the little girl had crept a long ways into her heart, melting the frost of years and awakening in her all the instincts of loving motherhood.
“I never b’lieved I could care for anybody as I do for her,” she said to Paul. “Why, only think that I, an old maid of sixty-five, who never had an offer, and only now and then a beau home from spellin’ school or singin’ school, should actually feel as if I was several mothers. I don’t see through it.”
Paul laughed merrily at her idea of several mothers, and then went to telegraph the glad news to Samona that Elithe was better. This was his third telegram, for after he knew Miss Hansford’s letter telling of Elithe’s illness must have reached there, he had sent a message every day, knowing how anxious the family would be. Miss Hansford had tried not to alarm them, and had only said Elithe was worn out with the journey and sick in bed from its effects. The telegrams, “Is about the same,” or “No worse,” frightened them more than the letter, and if the prayers in Oak City for her recovery were fervent and heartfelt, they were doubly so in Samona and at Deep Gulch.
“If I ever prayed in my life I’d do so now,” one of the toughest of the miners said, wiping his eyes with his grimy hand. “I should s’pose Stokes, who has been through the mill, would go at it. Hallo, Stokes! Ain’t there a prayer for the sick in that book of yourn you read so much?” he called to Stokes, coming slowly from his cabin.
Stokes nodded, and the rough continued: “Well, you’d better say it for Miss Elithe, and lively, too. No time to fool round now.”