"Charlie, I will send for Dr. Wilder if you are ready, for I'm never going to leave you another minute as long as we live."
"I think," said I, laughing, "that I should like to stand up first on my feet; that is, if I have any feet."
What a wonderful prop and support was Bessie! How skillfully she helped me to step once, twice, across the floor! and when I sank down, very tired, in the comfortable easy-chair by the window, she knelt on the floor beside me and bathed my forehead with fragrant cologne, that certainly did not come from Mrs. Splinter's tall bottle of lavender compound on the bureau.
"Oh, my dear boy, I have so much to say! Where shall I begin?"
"At the end," I said quietly. "Send for Dr. Wilder."
"But don't you want to hear what a naughty girl—"
"No, I want to hear nothing but 'I, Elizabeth, take thee—'"
"But I've been so very jealous, so suspicious and angry. Don't you want to hear how bad I am?"
"No," I said, closing the discussion after an old fashion of the Sloman cottage, "not until we two walk together to the Ledge to-morrow, my little wife and I."
"Where's a card—your card, Charlie? It would be more proper-like, as Mrs. Splinter would say, for you to write it."