“Like a top!”
“Bad dreams?” and Dr. Wright felt the pulse of the healthy looking patient, who, with the help of Gwen, had donned a very becoming boudoir cap and negligée, two articles of clothing that she had brought to camp in spite of the jeerings of her sisters, who did not see how they could be used. Helen had not had an illness since she was a child and had her tonsils out, and certainly a camp was no place to sport a filmy lace cap and a negligée of pale blue silk and lace.
“It is almost worth while having a sn—having a sprained ankle just to prove to my sisters that I was wise in bringing this cap and sacque,” she had laughingly told Gwen, who was assisting her. “I bet snake bite is going to come popping out of my mouth, willy nilly,” she said to herself. “I almost gave it away that time.”
Gwen, who loved pretty things and scented from afar the admiration Dr. Wright was beginning to hold for Helen, considered it very wise to have brought the dainty garments. She could not help thinking, with something akin to bitterness, of her own yellow cotton night gowns that Aunt Mandy considered superfluous articles of clothing; and of the coarse, gray flannel bed-sacque she had worn the summer before when she had caught the measles from Josh; and of how she must have looked when the old country doctor came to see her.
The tent was tidy and sweet when George Wright entered to see how his patient fared. Gwen had spread the steamer rugs over the cots and had even placed a bunch of honeysuckle on the little table at Helen’s bedside. She had had to purloin the table from Miss Somerville’s cabin, but that lady was willing to give up more than a table for her favorite young cousin.
Helen blushed a little when the young man asked her if she had had any bad dreams. The fact was she had had very pleasant dreams in which he had largely figured. She had dreamed that Josephus had turned into Pegasus and that, as she flew along on his shapely back, she had met Dr. Wright floating by on a white cloud and he had wanted to feel her pulse. She had put out her hand and as he felt her pulse, he had jumped from the white cloud square onto the back of Pegasus, and together they rode through the air, the winged horse looking kindly on them with much the benevolent expression of Josephus.
“No, my dreams were pleasant,” she smiled.
Dr. Wright certainly took a long time to feel any one’s pulse, but the truth was that he had forgotten to count, so taken up he was with the fact that pale blue was quite as becoming to Helen as gray with a dash of scarlet. I think if he had felt his own pulse, he would have been astonished at how far from normal his heart beats were at that moment.
“I have brought you the wallet from the Devil’s Gorge. Here it is for you to open!”