He came in smiling, saying without being questioned, “You want to know about the Rutgers, I suppose?” he understood Miss Vinton.
“Yes; do they need anything that I can supply?”
“So far as I can judge they would do very well if it were not for this sickness. If you can send comforts for the sick child, it would help. I would suggest the loan of a cot-bed, a soft pillow, and something in the way of a child’s wrapper, besides nourishing, easily digested food. Milk, beef extract—you know what to send?”
“Do you think the child will get well?”
“There is no reason why, with proper care and plenty of nourishing food, the child should not recover. If the family could be relieved so that the mother could give her whole time to the care of the child all would be well, so far as I can see.”
“I understand. I will see what I can do.”
Then the doctor bowed himself out, and as he went down street he said within himself, “I declare! to look at that girl and know what her sufferings are, one would feel that if any one could be excused for letting other people take care of themselves she would be the one. Yet she does more to help the poor, and smooth the beds of the sick and suffering than any other five women in this whole town! The Rutgers will find their path brightening, I am thinking!”
This was a true prophecy. Emma Copeland knew just how to carry out the wishes of her friend, and before noon the sick child lay in a clean white wrapper upon a fresh cot-bed. A little stand stood near with a white napkin spread upon it and a tray with a cup of beef tea, a glass of milk, a tiny saucer of nourishing jelly, a silver spoon on the tray, another beside the glass of medicine, and the mother had been made to understand that she was to give her whole time to the care of her sick child. A loaf of bread, and a piece of meat, and other things from the Vinton larder emphasized this injunction. The children, Carl and Gretchen, moved softly about; Conrad himself peeped in now and then to look upon the little one lying now so comfortably in the white bed, going back to his work with a lighter heart, saying in his native tongue, “God bless the kind lady!” One morning a visitor said to May Vinton:
“I am afraid you trouble yourself too much about other people. I hear you have taken up a poor German family. Why do you not let the authorities take care of the town’s poor?”
“Well, I am egotistical enough to think that I can do some things better than the authorities! They do not give sympathy, nor advice; and this is what some people need most of all. Then again Christ was not speaking of the public authorities when he said, ‘Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these ye have done it unto me.’ Besides a little help to these people, such as we would give to any friend in the time of sickness, does not degrade them in their own eyes nor in the estimation of their neighbors, as help from a public charity might. They only needed tiding over a deep place, now they will do well enough.”