First and foremost, what were you hunting for?"
"My hat and the butter," said Anthony meekly, and at this unique combination they both laughed.
Lyddy's laugh was particularly fresh, childlike, and pleased; one that would have astonished the Reynolds children.
She had seldom laughed heartily since little Rufus had cried and told her she frightened him when she twisted her face so.
"Your hat is in the wood-box, and I'll find the butter in the twinkling of an eye, though why you want it now is more than--My patience, Mr. Croft, your hand is burned to a blister!"
"Don't mind me. Be good enough to look at the boy and tell me what ails him; nothing else matters much."
"I will with pleasure, but let me ease you a little first.
Here's a rag that will be just the thing," and Lyddy, suiting the pretty action to the mendacious worn, took a good handkerchief from her pocket and tore it in three strips, after spreading it with tallow from a candle heated over the stove.
This done, she hound up the burned hand skillfully, and, crossing the dining-room, disappeared within the little chamber door beyond.
She came out presently, and said half hesitatingly, "Would you--mind going out in the orchard for an hour or so?
You seem to be rather in the way here, and I should like the place to myself, if you'll excuse me for saying so.
I'm ever so much more capable than Mrs. Buck; won't you give me a trial, sir? Here's your violin and your hat.
I'll call you if you can help or advise me."
"But I can't let a stranger come in and do my housework," he objected.
"I can't, you know, though I appreciate your kindness all the same."
"I am your nearest neighbor, and your only one, for that matter," said Lyddy firmly; "its nothing more than right that I should look after that sick child, and I must do it. I haven't got a thing to do in my own house.
I am nothing but a poor lonely old maid, who's been used to children all her life, and likes nothing better than to work over them."
A calm settled upon Anthony's perturbed spirit, as he sat under the apple-trees and heard Lyddy going to and fro in the cottage.
"She isn't any old maid," he thought; "she doesn't step like one; she has soft shoes and a springy walk. She must be a very handsome woman, with a hand like that; and such a voice!
I knew the moment she spoke that she didn't belong in this village."
As a matter of fact, his keen ear had caught the melody in Lyddy's voice, a voice full of dignity, sweetness, and reserve power.
His sense of touch, too, had captured the beauty of her hand, and held it in remembrance,--the soft palm, the fine skin, supple fingers, smooth nails, and firm round wrist.
These charms would never have been noted by any seeing man in Edgewood, but they were revealed to Anthony Croft while Lyddy, like the good Samaritan, bound up his wounds.
It is these saving stars that light the eternal darkness of the blind.
Lyddy thought she had met her Waterloo when, with arms akimbo, she gazed about the Croft establishment, which was a scene of desolation for the moment. Anthony's cousin from Bridgton was in the habit of visiting him every two months for a solemn house-cleaning, and Mrs. Buck from Pleasant River came every Saturday and Monday for baking and washing.
Between times Davy and his uncle did the housework together; and although it was respectably done, there was no pink-and-white daintiness about it, you may be sure.
Lyddy came out to the apple-trees in about an hour, laughing a little nervously as she said, "I'm sorry to have taken a mean advantage of you, Mr. Croft, but I know everything you've got in your house, and exactly where it is.
I couldn't help it, you see, when I was making things tidy.
It would do you good to see the boy. His room was too light, and the flies were devouring him. I swept him and dusted him, put on clean sheets and pillow slips, sponged him with bay rum, brushed his hair, drove out the flies, and tacked a green curtain up to the window. Fifteen minutes after he was sleeping like a kitten. He has a sore throat and considerable fever.
Could you--can you--at least, will you, go up to my house on an errand?"
"Certainly I can. I know it inside and out as well as my own."
"Very good. On the clock shelf in the sitting-room there is a bottle of sweet spirits of nitre; it's the only bottle there, so you can't make any mistake. It will help until the doctor comes.
I wonder you didn't send for him yesterday?"
"Davy wouldn't have him," apologized his uncle.
"Wouldn't he ?" said Lyddy with cheerful scorn.
"He has you under pretty good control, hasn't he?
But children are unmerciful tyrants."
"Couldn't you coax him into it before you go home?" asked Anthony in a wheedling voice.
"I can try; but it isn't likely I can influence him, if you can't. Still, if we both fail, I really don't see what 's to prevent our sending for the doctor in spite of him.
He is as weak as a baby, you know, and can't sit up in bed: what could he do? I will risk the consequences, if you will! "
There was a note of such amiable and winning sarcasm in all this, such a cheery, invincible courage, such a friendly neighborliness and cooperation, above all such a different tone from any he was accustomed to hear in Edgewood, that Anthony Croft felt warmed through to the core.
As he walked quickly along the road, he conjured up a vision of autumn beauty from the few hints nature gave even to her sightless ones on this glorious morning,--the rustle of a few fallen leaves under his feet, the clear wine of the air, the full rush of the swollen river, the whisking of the squirrels in the boughs, the crunch of their teeth on the nuts, the spicy odor of the apples lying under the trees.
He missed his mother that morning more than he had missed her for years.
How neat she was, how thrifty, how comfortable, and how comforting!
