“You’ve saved my life.”
“That’s a subject we won’t speak of just now, sir; you must be very quiet.”
“Oh, to be well and free once more!” broke in a plaintive tone from the invalid.
“If you will only remain quiet and easy in your mind, there’s no doubt all may yet be well,” replied the boy with significant emphasis as he held Warren’s eye a second with a meaning gaze.
Many questions came crowding to Warren’s lips; but Allen silenced him firmly and gently.
“Bye and bye, sir, I will tell you all I can, but you must drink this broth now and sleep.”
Warren drank the soup and with a feeling of peace new to him, turned his face to the wall and slept.
One week longer Warren lay on his rude bed. Allen refused to talk but told him that he had no cause for anxiety.
Maxwell was fascinated by his nurse; he thought him the prettiest specimen of boyhood he had ever met. The delicate brown features were faultless in outline; the closely cropped black hair was like velvet in its smoothness. He could not shake off the idea that somewhere he had known the lad before in his life. At times this familiarity manifested itself in the tones of the voice soft and low as a woman’s, then again it was in the carriage of the head or the flash of the beautiful large dark eyes. It was an evasive but haunting memory.
One day Allen said: “Mr. Maxwell, I’m not to tend you any longer after this week. I’m to be sold.”