That night Florence was worse, and the succeeding days and weeks were but so many chapters of feverish fancies and hot, throbbing pain. The sun climbed higher and the snowbanks sank lower day by day, but she knew nothing of them. Her world was square, her sky a dingy white, her surroundings the changing forms of a disordered dream. The gray-haired country doctor had peered at her through his spectacles and made the motions of “Typhoid” with his lips to ’Lisbeth. Florence had seen it under her half-closed eyelids, but was too weary to care much. So January came and went, and after it February, before she found herself inclined to take the slightest interest in anything outside of those four walls, with their faded, large-figured paper.
It was a warm, delicious day in early March,—one of those foretastes of spring which in New England match the Indian summer of late autumn. The green curtain swayed slightly back and forth as the sweet south wind crept in through the crannies of the old, warped window-frame. A song-sparrow, perching on the fence just outside, sang his contented little Easter hymn over and over, until the sick girl felt herself being drawn back to life once more, and life seemed beautiful. ’Lisbeth was sitting in the kitchen, with the door half open between, and Florence could hear the soothing creak of her chair as she rocked gently to and fro at her knitting. Presently she called, “Mrs. Eldridge!”
The creaking stopped instantly, and health and life, embodied in ’Lisbeth, entered the room.
“Well, dearie, feelin’ a little better, ain’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am,”—gratefully. “I want to know, if you please, about things that have happened since I have been ill.”
“Oh, that’s a short story. Mrs. Walton ’n’ the children went back t’ the city six weeks ago, and left you in my charge. An’ it’s precious little trouble you’ve been. For my part I’d rather take care o’ ten women, all sick with the typhus, than one man with a headache.”
Florence smiled faintly. Then she said, “I haven’t heard so many footsteps in the kitchen lately. Have any of your family gone?”
“Bless you, no. That’s only because Elsie’s made a pair o’ slippers to wear about the house, so ’s not to wake you when you’d caught a sleep.”