"Good-night, friends!" she said with a confiding glance around. "I think I shall be able to get the sleep now. God bless you all!"
When she was gone, the hush was unbroken for several minutes. At last Winifred spoke.
"I don't know how the rest of you feel, but somehow I have a sensation of being a lay figure in the shop-window of life, and having all of a sudden seen a real woman go by."
"Jove! what eyes she has!" said Brady, continuing thoughts of his own, rather than answering Winifred's speech.
"Really," said Ben Bradford, "it wasn't unpleasant at all."
"Unpleasant!" exclaimed his aunt. "Well, I should say not, unless heaven is unpleasant, and angels, and the Judgment Day, which I daresay it will be for you, Ben Bradford, unless you mend your ways. Good-night! I'm going up to see that the child has a hot-water bag to her feet, and a mustard plaster on her chest. The Salvation Army needs an efficient ambulance corps."
"Hm!" said Dr. Cricket, as Miss Standish [Pg 152] disappeared. "Mary may have chosen the better part; but I pity the household that's all Marys. Give me a Martha in mine every time!
"That reminds me," he added briskly, "that I must look after my patient, and not let him pitch himself into that bed, which has not been aired for a week; and nobody in this house knows the difference between damp sheets and dry ones. Do you know, Mr. Brady," he continued, as he rose from his chair with a little rheumatic hitch, "I have taken a great shine to that queer friend of yours. I don't know how it is, but I suspect it is because he is such a contrast to most folks. It's a comfort to meet a man who keeps his best foot back."
"Oh, Flint is a brick!" said Brady, with enthusiasm. "I have known him to do the nicest things. There was a fellow once in college—he was rather pushing socially, and nobody liked him—but he was 'a dig,'" and he got sick from studying too much. None of the rest of us ever fell ill of that trouble; but he did, and he was so poor he didn't want to let any one know about it, for fear he would be obliged to send for a doctor. It was found out though; and one day a doctor and nurse turned up at the fellow's room,—said they'd been asked not to say who sent them; but they stayed and pulled him through. He never knew who his benefactor [Pg 153] was; but I did, and you may judge of my surprise, when the fellow got about, to see Flint cut him on the street.
"'What in thunder did you do that for?' I asked, for I was dumfounded to see him do it.