“A week?” sprang from the young girl involuntarily. Dismay shone in her eyes, but the doctor, with a fatherly pat, assured her that she had great cause for gratitude, as it might have been much worse.
“The next time you go to gather dogwood blossoms, young lady,” he advised jovially, “wear rubber heels, and then you won’t slip on stones.”
As the doctor bade her good afternoon, promising to come again in a few days to see how the foot was progressing, Nathalie thought of her rescuers, and raising her head peered anxiously around.
“The girls have gone, but they left a good-by for you,” her mother answered to her look of inquiry, “and Miss Dame says she will be in to-morrow to see how you are.”
By to-morrow Nathalie had begun to think it was not at all unpleasant to be a short-time invalid, and she jokingly requested her mother to see that her head was not screwed around from sheer conceit at being the recipient of so much attention.
Mrs. Morrow, the doctor’s young wife, had sent her a beautiful bunch of yellow daffodils from the very garden that Nathalie had been admiring all the week, while the little, silver-haired old lady next door—Nathalie could have hugged her, she looked so grand-motherly—had sent her a snow-frosted nut-cake. Lucille—an unheard-of thing—had condescended to alight from her pedestal of self and had played and sung Nathalie’s favorite selections all the morning. Even Dorothy, whose engagement book was always brimming over, had darned stockings for her. Of course, Nathalie knew that she would have to rip out every stitch, but that was the child’s way of showing that she, too, wanted to be sympathetic and kind.
The success of the day, however, was when Helen Dame’s dark eyes smiled at her from the adjoining porch, and she asked if Nathalie felt like chatting for a while.
“Indeed I do,” answered Nathalie animatedly, “I have been just dying to talk with you ever since you were so kind.”
“Oh, how sweet you look!” exclaimed Helen a few moments later as she shook hands with the patient, “with your pink ribbons—just the color of your cheeks.” For the girl’s color had deepened as her visitor laid a bunch of violets on her lap. “These are from the girls, the Girl Pioneers—that is our Pioneer song,” she added laughingly.
“I just love violets!” Nathalie sniffed at the purple petals. “And the girls, do you mean the ones who so kindly came to my aid the other day? Oh, Miss Dame, I hardly know how to express my appreciation of your kindness,” her voice trembled slightly, “in hurrying home to tell Mother.”