"But I say you must not be content!" Prudence again remonstrated. "Did ever any one see such a poor, weak, white hand as that? Look at the thin, thin veins."
"Ah, but you know not, sweetheart," Judith said, and she herself looked at those thin blue veins in the white hand; "they seem to me to be running full of music and happiness ever since I came out of the fever and found my father talking to me in the old way."
CHAPTER XXXVI.
"WESTERN WIND, WHEN WILL YOU BLOW?"
There was much laughing among the good folk of Stratford town—or rather among those of them allowed to visit Quiney's back yard—over the nondescript vehicle that he and his friend Pleydell were constructing there. But that was chiefly at the first, when the neighbors would call it a coffin on wheels or a grown-up cradle; afterward, when it grew into shape and began to exhibit traces of decoration (the little canopy at the head, for example, was covered, over with blue taffeta that made a shelter from the sun), they moderated their ridicule, and at last declared it a most ingenious and useful contrivance, and one that went as easily on its leather bands as any king's coach that ever was built. And they said they hoped it would do good service, for they knew it was meant for Judith; and she had won the favor and good-will of many in that town, in so far as an unmarried young woman was deemed worthy of consideration.
But that was an anxious morning when Quiney set forth with this strange vehicle for the cottage. Little Willie Hart was there, and Quiney had flung him inside, saying he would give him a ride as far as Shottery, but thereafter he did not speak a word to the boy. For this was the morning on which he was to see Judith for the first time since the fever had left her, and not only that, but he had been appointed to carry her down-stairs to the larger room below. This was by the direct instructions of the doctor. Judith's father was now in London again, the doctor was not a very powerful man, the staircase was over-narrow to let two of the women try it between them; who, therefore, was there but this young athlete to gather up that precious charge and bear her gently forth? But when he thought of that first meeting with Judith he trembled, and dismay and apprehension filled his heart lest he should show himself in the smallest way shocked by her appearance. Careless as she might have been of other things, she had always put a value on that; she knew she had good looks, and she liked to look pretty and dainty, and to wear becoming and pretty things. And again and again he schooled himself and argued with himself. He must be prepared to find her changed—nay, had he not already had one glimpse of her, as she lay asleep, in the cold light of the dawn?—he must be prepared to find the happy and radiant face no longer that, but all faded and white and worn, the clear shining eyes no longer laughing, but sunken and sad, and the beautiful sun-brown hair—that was her chiefest pride of all—no longer clustering round her neck. Not that he himself cared—Judith was for him always and ever Judith, whatever she might be like, but his terror was lest he should betray, in the smallest fashion, some pained surprise. He knew how sensitive she was, and as an invalid she would be even more so, and what a fine thing it would be if her eyes were suddenly to fill with tears on witnessing his disappointment! And so he argued and argued, and strove to think of Judith as a ghost—as anything rather than her former self; and when he reached the cottage, he asked whether Judith was ready to be brought down, in so matter-of-fact a way that he seemed perfectly unconcerned.
Well, she was not ready, for her grandmother had the tiring of her, and the old dame was determined that (if she had her way) her grandchild should look none too like an invalid. If the sun-brown curls were gone, at least the cap that she wore should have pretty blue ribbons where it met under the chin. And she would have her wear the lace cuffs, too, that Quiney had brought her from Warwick—did not she owe it to him to do service for the gift? And when all that was done, she made Judith take a little wine-and-water, to strengthen her for the being carried down-stairs, and then she sent word that Quiney might come up.
He made his appearance forthwith, a little pale, perhaps, and hesitating and apprehensive as he crossed the threshold. And then he came quickly forward, and there was a sudden wonder of joy and gladness in his eyes.
"Judith," he exclaimed, quite involuntarily, and forgetting everything, "why, how well you are looking!—indeed, indeed you are!—sweetheart, you are not changed at all!"