They put out at dawn—into a sea as wild as ever I knew an open boat to brave. The doctor bade us a merry good-bye; and he waved his hand, shouting that which the wind swept away, as the boat darted off towards South Tickle. My sister and I went to the heads of Good Promise to watch the little craft on her way. The clouds were low and black—torn by the wind—driving up from the southwest like mad: threatening still heavier weather. We followed the skiff with my father’s glass—saw her beat bravely on, reeling through the seas, smothered in spray—until she was but a black speck on the vast, angry waste, and, at last, vanished altogether in the spume and thickening fog. Then we went back to my father’s house, prayerfully wishing the doctor safe voyage to Wreck Cove; and all that day, and all the next, while the gale still blew, my sister was nervous and downcast, often at the window, often on the heads, forever sighing as she went about the work of the house. And when I saw her thus distraught and colourless—no warm light in her eyes—no bloom on her dimpled cheeks—no merry smile lurking about the corners of her sweet mouth—I was fretted beyond description; and I determined this: that when the doctor got back from Wreck Cove I should report her case to him, whether she liked it or not, with every symptom I had observed, and entreat him, by the love and admiration in which I held him, to cure her of her malady, whatever the cost.
On the evening of the third day, when the sea was gone down and the wind was blowing fair and mild from the south, I sat with my sister at the broad window, where was the outlook upon great hills, and upon sombre water, and upon high, glowing sky—she in my mother’s rocker, placidly sewing, as my mother used to do, and I pitifully lost in my father’s armchair, covertly gazing at her, in my father’s way.
“Is you better, this even, sister, dear?” I asked.
“Oh, ay,” she answered, vehemently, as my mother used to do. “Much better.”
“You’re wonderful poorly.”
“’Tis true,” she said, putting the thread between her white little teeth. “But,” the strand now broken, “though you’d not believe it, Davy, dear, I’m feeling—almost—nay, quite—well.”
I doubted it. “’Tis a strange sickness,” I observed, with a sigh.
“Yes, Davy,” she said, her voice falling, her lips pursed, her brows drawn down. “I’m not able t’ make it out, at all. I’m feelin’—so wonderful—queer.”
“Is you, dear?”