“How very kind! Can I see Elsie soon? I should so like to be read to a little bit.”
“Why, yes, I s’pose so,” said ’Lisbeth rather doubtfully. “I d’ know ’s there’d be any objection. Oh, that reminds me. Elsie was over t’ the Corner early this morning, and brought these flowers. There’s a greenhouse there, where they keep ’em growing right through the winter. Seems ’s if they might have been a little brighter, now, don’t it?”
While she was talking, she stepped into the next room, raising her voice as she went, and returned with a china vase painted gaudily on one side and containing a loose cluster of cut flowers. Florence noticed at the first glance that they were so arranged as to bring the unpainted side of the vase in front; at the second, that they had been chosen thoughtfully. One or two dark heliotropes, white pinks, and a creamy, half-opened rose, with slender ferns for a background: that was all.
“I was going to tie the stems up with a piece of string, but Elsie would have it they’d wilt quicker, and would look kind o’ sot besides. You was to take out one of the pinks to hold in your hand, if you liked. They last longer ’n the rest.”
So the dainty blossom, with its folds within folds of whiteness, was held between the slight girl-fingers, in no way less dainty and delicate than itself. By a sudden impulse Florence pressed it to her lips like a child. “You are all so good to me!” she said, with quivering lips. “I’m not used to being taken care of. Please thank Elsie for me, and ask her to come in when she can spare the time.”
Mrs. Eldridge had been stooping to pick up a shred from the neat carpet, and but half caught the words. “Who d’ you say? O, Elsie! Well, I’ll give your message just ’s you put it.”
But Elsie did not come the next day, nor the next. She began to seem to Florence like some beneficent brownie, doing all her good deeds before the household was awake, and then disappearing until her services were again needed.
At last came the eventful day when the invalid was to be allowed to sit up for half an hour. She had looked forward to the time with eagerness. The old doctor, who had a vein of grim humor under his white beard, gruffly called her his little im-patient. But, to tell the truth, the stiff-backed chairs which she had thus far seen were hardly suggestive of luxurious rest; they were built for well people. Men and women in that part of the country make but little reckoning upon sickness. When it comes, it is met with a stern and uncompromising resistance; but the thought of humoring it by such compliances as reclining-chairs never for a moment enters their heads. It was, therefore, a genuine surprise when, after an extraordinary amount of whispering and hurrying in the kitchen, the door opened, and, assisted by ’Lisbeth, in walked a chair of such inviting proportions and soft, padded curves that they plainly expressed themselves to the effect that they would be extremely miserable unless reclined upon, and that speedily.