“It was the elevator, sir,” she said, eagerly. “The chain broke, and it went down with a bang, and Mark was on it, and he rolled off somehow, he doesn't know how; and he has been that bad that he couldn't tell me if he had. He was kind of wild, sir, all night, and talking about his place.”
“Was there no one but you to be with him during the night?” Mrs. Roberts asked. “Where is the mother?”
“We've got no mother, ma'am; there is only Mark and me—and father,” she added, after a doubtful pause. “But father was not at home last night. Oh, I didn't need no one to take care of Mark. I wouldn't have left him.”
“And he likes to have you take care of him, I am sure. What do you give him to eat? He will need nourishing food, I think; beef teas and broths, and nice little tempting dishes, made with milk, perhaps. Are you his cook, too? I wonder if you wouldn't like to have me show you how to make good things for him? I've learned how to make some nice dishes that sick people like.”
Before the bewildered girl could answer, the doctor turned abruptly from his long examination of his patient, and gave the guests the first attention he had vouchsafed them. The truth was this man had had some unfortunate experiences with district visitors, and had perhaps an unreasonable prejudice against them as a class. “I can't help it, ma'am,” he said to Mrs. Saunders, when she was taking him to task one day. “There are exceptions, of course, at least we will hope there are; but if you had seen some of my specimens, you would be the first to wish an infusion of common sense could be introduced among them. As a rule, they offer a tract where they should give a loaf of bread or a bowl of broth; and wedge their advice and reproofs in with every helpful movement. It is like so many doses of medicine to the patient; to be endured because he is at their mercy, and can't help himself. They mean well, the most of them; but the trouble is, we have a way of making district visitors out of people who have nothing to do, and who have never learned that 'all the nations of the earth were made of one blood.'”
Something in Mrs. Roberts' tones or words seemed to interest him, and he turned toward her.
“Does this alley belong to you?” he asked, abruptly, his mind still full of the district visitor.
She regarded him with a puzzled air for a moment, then answered naïvely:—
“I don't think it does; if it did I would have some things ever so different.”
Dr. Everett laughed; and Mr. Roberts came forward and introduced himself.