"And the mouse-ear is come!" said Faith as she applied herself to the refreshment of salt and watercresses. "I wonder whether Reuben does this because he loves flowers him self, or because he knows I do. I guess it's both. How lovely they are! How my dairy must want me, mother." Which was said with a little recollective patient sigh.
"I guess it can wait," said her mother cheerfully. "And I guess it'll have to. You needn't think you'll be let do anything for one while, Faith."
"I guess I shall, mother. I am sure I am stronger to-day,—and Dr. Harrison said I had less fever. And your pigeon is good. Besides, I must,—if I can,"—said Faith, with an anticipative glance this time.
"It's my belief, child," said her mother, "that if Dr. Harrison had staid away altogether—or never staid here more than five minutes at a time, you'd have been better long ago. But I think you are better—in spite of him."
Of the two subjects Faith preferred the pigeon to Dr. Harrison, and discussed it quite to her mother's satisfaction. But if silent, she thought never the less. Both Reuben Taylor's words and her mother's words quickened her to thinking, and thinking seemed of very little use. The next day when the doctor came she was as grave and still and unresponsive as she could be. And it had no effect on him whatever. He was just as usual, he talked just as usual; and Faith could but be grieved, and be silent. It did not enter her gentle imagination that the very things which so troubled her were spoken on purpose to trouble her. How could it? when they made their way into the conversation and into her hearing as followers of something else, as harpies that worried or had worried somebody else, as shapes that a cloud might take and be a cloud again—only she could not forget that shape. It was near now the time for Mr. Linden to come home, and Faith looked for his coming with an hourly breath of longing. It seemed to her that his very being there would at once break the mesh Dr. Harrison was so busy weaving and in which she had no power to stop him.
But the doctor's opportunity for playing this game was nearing an end, and he knew it. He did not know that Mr. Linden was coming; he did know that Faith was getting well.
A day or two after the talk with Reuben it happened that Mrs. Derrick was detained down stairs when the doctor came up to see Faith. The room was full of a May warmth and sweetness from the open windows; and Faith herself in a white dress instead of the brown wrapper, looked May-like enough. Not so jocund and blooming certainly; she was more like a snowdrop than a crocus. Her cheeks were pale and thin, but their colour was fresh; and her eye had the light of returning health,—or of returning something else!
"You are getting well!" said the doctor. "I shall lose my work—and forgive me, my pleasure!"
"I will give you some better work to do, Dr. Harrison."
"What is that? Anything for you!—"