“I am taking care of my father,” she said.
“So you shall, little woman,” he answered. “I would that we had such nurses as you at the hospital. Why didn't you send for me at once?”
“I wanted to,” said Cynthia.
“Bless her good sense;” said the doctor; “she has more than you, Wetherell. Why didn't you take her advice? If your father does not do as I tell him, he will be a very sick man indeed. He must go into the country and stay there.”
“But I must live, Doctor,” said William Wetherell.
The doctor looked at Cynthia.
“You will not live if you stay here,” he replied.
“Then he will go,” said Cynthia, so quietly that he gave her another look, strange and tender and comprehending. He, sat and talked of many things: of the great war that was agonizing the nation; of the strong man who, harassed and suffering himself, was striving to guide it, likening Lincoln unto a physician. So the doctor was wont to take the minds of patients from themselves. And before he left he gave poor Wetherell a fortnight to decide.
As he lay on his back in that room among the chimney tops trying vainly to solve the problem of how he was to earn his salt in the country, a visitor was climbing the last steep flight of stairs. That visitor was none other than Sergeant Ephraim Prescott, son of Isaiah of the pitch-pipe, and own cousin of Cynthia Ware's. Sergeant Ephraim was just home from the war and still clad in blue, and he walked with a slight limp by reason of a bullet he had got in the Wilderness, and he had such an honest, genial face that little Cynthia was on his knee in a moment.
“How be you, Will? Kind of poorly, I callate. So Cynthy's b'en took,” he said sadly. “Always thought a sight of Cynthy. Little Cynthy favors her some. Yes, thought I'd drop in and see how you be on my way home.”