“Why, Gretel, how could you think such dreadful things? Percy and I have been here ever since we heard of your accident, only you were too ill to know us. It has been a very sad time, but it is all over now, so shut your eyes, and try to go to sleep again. I see Miss Simpson is beginning to look as if she thought I was letting you talk too much.”
It was an afternoon a week later, and Gretel was sitting bolstered up with pillows in the arm-chair by the window. She was still very pale and thin, but was gaining strength each day, and that morning the doctor had removed the last strip of plaster from her forehead. Miss Simpson—the white-capped nurse—was reading aloud to her, and on the table was a big bowl filled with beautiful roses, which had arrived only an hour before from Mr. Douane’s place on the Hudson. Gretel looked the picture of content, as she leaned back among her pillows, listening to the adventures of Tom Sawyer. She had grown very fond of kind Miss Simpson, and her days at the big hospital had been anything but unpleasant.
A knock at the door brought the reading to a sudden pause, and in answer to Miss Simpson’s “Come in,” an official appeared with a card, which he handed to the nurse.
“Some friends have come to see you, Gretel,” said Miss Simpson, glancing at the card. “I think they must be the children who sent ‘Tom Sawyer’; Jerry and Geraldine Barlow.”
“Oh, I should love to see them,” cried Gretel, eagerly. “May they come in, Miss Simpson?”
Miss Simpson said they certainly might, and that she would go to the reception room, and bring them herself. She disappeared for a few moments, and when she returned she was closely followed by the twins, both looking very much awed, and almost preternaturally solemn.
At sight of Gretel, with all her hair cut off, and a big scar over one temple, they became so painfully embarrassed, that neither of them spoke a word, and, contrary to the usual order of things, she was forced to make all the advances.
“I’m so glad to see you both,” she said, cordially. “Won’t you sit down?”
The twins took the chairs Miss Simpson placed for them, still in the same embarrassed silence, and the nurse, thinking the children might feel more at their ease if left to themselves, went out of the room, after telling Gretel to ring the little bell at her side if she wanted anything. Then Jerry found his tongue, and remarked in his gruffest tones—