The Second Violin Part 24

Mrs. Peyton was looking at him with dismay. "Do I understand you have taken him to a hospital?" she asked.

Doctor Churchill nodded. "To the boys' surgical ward. Nothing contagious admitted to the hospital. It's a wonderful pleasure to the little chaps to see a boy from outside, and Ran enjoyed it, too, didn't you?"

"Oh, it was jolly!" said the boy.

"I shouldn't think that was exactly the word to describe such a spot,"

said Mrs. Peyton, and she looked displeased. "I think there are quite enough sad sights in the world for his young eyes without taking him into the midst of suffering. I should not have permitted it if you had consulted me."

It was true that Doctor Churchill possessed a frank and boyish face, wearing ordinarily an exceedingly genial expression; but the friendly gray eyes were capable of turning steely upon provocation, and they turned that way now. He returned his cousin's look with one which concealed with some difficulty both surprise and disgust.

"I took Ran nowhere that he would see any extreme suffering," he explained. "This ward contains only convalescents from various injuries and operations. The graver cases are elsewhere, and he saw nothing of those. A visit to this ward is likely to excite sympathy, it is true, but not sympathy of a painful sort. The boys have very good times among themselves, after a limited fas.h.i.+on, and I think Ran had a good time with them. How about it, Ran?"

"Oh, I did! I taught two of 'em to play waggle-finger. Their legs were hurt, but their hands were all right, and they could play waggle-finger as well as anybody. They liked it."

"Nevertheless, Randolph is of a very sensitive and delicate make-up,"

pursued his mother, "and I don't think such a.s.sociations good for him.

He moaned in his sleep last night, and I couldn't think what it could be."

"It couldn't have been the candy we made this afternoon, could it, Cousin Lula?" Charlotte asked, in her gentlest way. A comprehending smile touched the corners of Doctor Churchill's lips.

"Why, of course not!" said Mrs. Peyton, quickly. "Candy made this afternoon--how absurd, Charlotte! It was last night his sleep was disturbed."

"But the hospital visit was this morning," Charlotte said. "I should think the one might as easily be responsible as the other."

Mrs. Peyton looked confused. "I understood you to say the visit to the hospital occurred yesterday," she said, with dignity, and Doctor Churchill smothered his amus.e.m.e.nt. "I certainly do not approve of taking children to such places," she repeated.

Charlotte adroitly turned the conversation into other channels, and nothing more was said about hospitals just then. Only the boy, when he had a chance, whispered in Doctor Churchill's ear:

"You just wait. I'll tease her into it."

His cousin smiled back at him and shook his head. "Teasing's a mighty poor way of getting things, Ran," he said. "Leave it to me."

Toward the end of the following day Jeff, crossing the lawn at his usual rapid pace, was hailed from Doctor Churchill's office door by Mrs.

Fields. The housekeeper waved a telegram as he approached.

"Here, Mr. Jeff," said she. "Would you mind opening this? There ain't a soul in the house, and I don't want to take such a liberty, but it ought to be read. I make no manner of doubt it's from those extry visitors that are coming."

"Where are they all?" Jeff fingered the envelope reluctantly. "I don't like opening other people's messages."

"I don't know where they are, that's it. Doctor took Miss Charlotte and Ranny off after lunch in his machine, and Mis' Peyton and Lucy have gone to town with your mother. Doctor Andy wouldn't like it if his friends came without anybody to meet 'em."

Jeff tore open the dispatch. "The first two words will tell me, I suppose," he said. "h.e.l.lo--yes, you're right! They'll be here on the five-ten. That's"--he pulled out his watch--"why, there's barely time to get to the station now! This must have been delayed. You say you don't know where anybody is?"

"Not a soul. Doctor usually leaves word, but he didn't this time."

"I'll telephone the hospital," and Jeff hurried to Doctor Churchill's desk. In a minute he had learned that the doctor had come and gone for the last time that day. He looked at Mrs. Fields.

"You'll have to go, Mr. Jeff," said she. "I know Doctor Andy's ways.

He'd as soon let company go without their dinners as not be on hand when their train came in. He wasn't expecting the Lees till to-morrow."

"Of course," said Jeff, "I'll go, since there's n.o.body else. How am I to know 'em? Young man and sick girl? All right, that's easy," and he was off to catch a car at the corner.

As he rode into town, however, he was rebelling against the situation.

"This guest business is being overdone," he observed to himself. "These people are probably some more off the Peyton piece of cloth. An invalid girl lying round on couches for Fiddle to wait on--another Lucy, probably, only worse, because she's ill. Well, I'm not going to be any more cordial than the law calls for. I'll have to bring 'em out in a carriage, I suppose. She'll be too limp for the trolley."

He reached the station barely in time to engage a carriage before the train came in. He took up his position inside the gates through which all pa.s.sengers must pa.s.s from the train-shed into the great station.

"Looking for somebody?" asked a voice at his elbow.

He glanced quickly down at one of his old schoolmates, Carolyn Houghton.

"Yes, guests of the Churchills," he answered, his gaze instantly returning to the throng pouring toward him from the train. "Help me, will you? I don't know them from Adam. It's a man and his invalid sister, old friends of Andy's."

"There they are," said Carolyn, promptly, indicating an approaching pair.

Jeff laughed. "The sister isn't quite so antique as that," he objected, as a little woman of fifty wavered past on the arm of a stout gentleman.

"You said 'old' friends," retorted Carolyn. "Look, Jeff, isn't that she?

The sister's being wheeled in a chair by a porter, the brother's walking beside her. They _look_ like Doctor Churchill's friends, Jeff."

"Think you can tell Andy's friends by their uniform?"

"You can tell anybody's intimate friends in a crowd--I mean the same kind of people look alike," a.s.serted Carolyn, with emphasis. "These are the ones, I'm sure. I'll just watch while you greet them and then I'll slip off. I'm taking this next train. What a sweet face that girl has, but how delicate--like a little flower. She's a dear, I'm sure. The brother looks nice, too. They're the ones, I know. See, the brother's looking hard at us all inside the gates."

"Here goes, then. Good-by!" Jeff turned away to the task of making himself known to the strangers. But he was forced to admit that if Charlotte must meet another onslaught of visitors, these certainly did look attractive.

"Yes, I'm Thorne Lee," the young man answered, with a straight look into Jeff's eyes and a grasp of the outstretched hand as Jeff introduced himself. He motioned the porter to wheel the chair out of the pressing crowd.

Jeff explained about the delayed telegram. Mr. Lee presented him to the young girl in the chair, and Jeff looked down into a pair of hazel eyes which instantly claimed his sympathy, the shadows of fatigue lay on them so heavily. But Miss Evelyn Lee's smile was bright if fleeting, and she answered Jeff's announcement that he had a carriage waiting with so appreciative a word of grat.i.tude that he found his preconceived antipathy to Doctor Churchill's guests slipping away.

So presently he had them in a carriage and bowling through the streets which led toward the suburbs. Thorne Lee sat beside his sister, supporting her, and talked with Jeff. By the time they had covered the long drive to the house Jeff was hoping Lee would stay a month.

The hazel eyes of Lee's young sister had closed and the lashes lay wearily sweeping the pale cheeks as the carriage drove up.

"Are we there?" Lee asked, bending over the slight figure. "Open your eyes, dear."

Jeff jumped out and ran to the house. He burst in upon Charlotte and Andy. "Your friends are here!" he shouted. "I had to meet 'em myself."

Doctor Churchill and Charlotte were at the door before the words were out of Jeff's mouth, and in a moment more Andy was lifting Evelyn Lee's light figure in his arms, thanking heaven inwardly as he did so for his young wife's wholesome weight. At the same moment words of of eager, cheery welcome for his old friend were on his lips:

"Thorne Lee, I'm gladder to see you than anybody in the world! Miss Evelyn, here's Mrs. Churchill. She's not an old married woman at all--she's the dearest girl in the world. She's going to seem to you like one of your schoolfellows. Charlotte, here she is; take good care of her."

Thorne Lee stood looking on, a relieved smile on his lips as his old friend's wife took his sick little sister into her charge. It was not two minutes before he saw Evelyn, lying pale and mute on the couch, yet smiling up at Charlotte's bright young face.

Charlotte administered a cup of hot bouillon talking so engagingly meanwhile that Evelyn was beguiled into taking without protest the whole of the much-needed nourishment. Then he saw the young invalid carried off to bed, relieved of the necessity of meeting any more members of the household. He learned, as Charlotte slipped into the room after an hour's absence, that Evelyn had already dropped off to sleep. He leaned back in his chair with a long breath.

"What kind of a girl is this you've married, Andy?" he asked, with a smile and a look from one to the other. The three were alone, Mrs.

Peyton and her children having gone out to some sort of entertainment.

"Just what she seems to be," replied Doctor Churchill, smiling back, "and a thousand times more."