in his tramp up and down the room, Dr. Howard rested his hand on the pile of auburn hair.
“It was all you could do, Nancy. One must take responsibilities as they come.”
Nancy broke the pause that followed. Rising, she pinned on her hat.
“Where are you going?”
“To the station. I’ll telegraph to Quebec for a nurse. We can have one out here by night. Good by, daddy; and don’t let the Lion eat you up.”
More than an hour later, she came toiling up the hill and dropped wearily down on the steps.
“No use, daddy! I have exhausted every chance, and there’s not a nurse to be had. Quebec appears to be in the throes of an epidemic. However, I have made up my mind what to do next.”
“What now?”
“I shall turn nurse.”
“Nancy, you can’t!”
“I must. You’re not strong enough, and such a curiosity as this man mustn’t be left to die alone. Besides, it will be fun, and Mother Gagnier will help me.”
“But you don’t know anything about nursing.”
“I won’t kill him. You can coach me behind the scenes, and I shall scramble through, some way or other. Besides, the Good Sainte Anne will help me. I’ve just been tipping her, for the way she has come to my relief. Only this morning, I promised her half a dollar, if she would deign to give me a little excitement.” Then the girl turned still more directly to her father, and looked up at him with wayward, mocking, tender eyes. “Daddy dear, this isn’t the only emergency we have met, side by side. Mother Gagnier shall do all the rougher part; the rest you shall leave to me. Truly, have you ever known me to fail you at the wrong time?”
And the doctor answered, with perfect truthfulness—
“No, Nancy; I never have.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Out on the end of the long pier that juts far into the Saint Lawrence, Nancy Howard was idly tossing scraps of paper into the choppy surface of the mighty river. Behind her, Sainte Anne-de-Beaupré was rapidly putting on her winter guise. The last pilgrimage ended, the good saint lost no time in packing up her relics for safe keeping, until the next year’s pilgrims should turn their faces towards her shrine. Nancy had returned from the telegraph office, two days before, past rows of dismantled booths and of shops whose proprietors were already taking inventory of their remaining possessions. The heaped-up missals and rosaries made little impression upon her; but even her stalwart Protestantism rebelled at sight of the bare-armed priestess who was scrubbing a plaster Virgin with suds and a nailbrush. Nancy would have preferred the more impersonal cleansing administered by the garden hose.
Even Nancy Howard had been forced to admit that the Good Sainte Anne had earned her money. Excitement had not been lacking, during the past two days. It was one thing to come to her father’s aid with an offer to play nurse; it was quite another matter to give several hours of each day to the whims of a man who was as unused to pain as he was to the thwarting of his plans. Nancy had expected a playful bit of masquerade. She promptly discovered that she was doomed to work as she had never worked before. She had informed Barth that it was her custom to leave all financial arrangements in the hands of the doctor. She had no idea what value it might have pleased her father to set upon her services. She had a very distinct idea, however, that, whatever the value, she fully earned it. Arrogant and desponding, masterful and peevish by turns, Cecil Barth was no easy patient. Accustomed all his life to being served, he now had less notion than ever of lifting a finger to serve himself. Moreover, Nancy Howard had a rooted objection to being smoked at. Her objection was based upon chivalry, not antipathy to nicotine; nevertheless, it was active and permanent. She only regained her lost poise, when she tried to reduce to systematic orthography the unspellable accent of her patient, most of all that prolonged Oh-er, raahther! which appeared to represent his superlative degree of comparison.
“Oh, nurse?”
Barth’s voice met her on the threshold, as, capped with a bit of lawn and covered with an ample apron from the wardrobe of Madame Gagnier, she opened the door of the invalid’s room.
“Yes, sir.”
“I thought you would never come back.”
“You have needed something?”
“Yes. The room is too warm, and I think it is time for the rubbing.”
“Not for fifteen minutes,” Nancy answered calmly. “I told you I would be back in time.”
“Yes. But it is so warm here.”
“Why didn’t you call Madame Gagnier to open a window?”
“Because she is so very clumsy. Please open it now.”
Nancy repressed a sudden longing to cross the room on her heels. Barth was sitting up, that day; but the lines around his lips and the brilliant patch of scarlet on either cheek betrayed the fact that the past two days had worn upon him.
“Is your foot aching now?” she asked, as she returned to her seat.
“Yes, intensely. Do you suppose that doctor knows how to treat it?”
Nancy’s eyes flashed.
“He ought to,” she answered shortly.
Barth turned argumentative.
“It is not a question of obligation; it is a mere matter of training and experience,” he observed.
“He is the best doctor in the city,” Nancy persisted.
“In Quebec?”
“No; at home.”
For the dozenth time since his catastrophe, Barth regretted the loss of his glasses. Nancy’s tone betrayed her irritation. Unable to see her face distinctly, he was also unable to fathom the cause of her displeasure. He peered at her dubiously for a moment; then he dropped back in his chair.
“Very likely,” he agreed languidly. “Now will you please move the foot-rest a very little to the right?”
“So?”
“Yes. Thank you, nurse.”
“Is there anything else?”
He pointed to the table at his elbow.
“My pipe, please; and then if you wouldn’t mind reading aloud for a time.”
Nancy did mind acutely; but she took up the book with an outward showing of indifference, while Barth composed himself to smoke and doze at his pleasure.
For a long hour, Nancy read on and on. Now and then she glanced out at the sunshiny lawn beneath the window; now and then she looked up at her patient, wondering if he would never bid her cease. In spite of her rebellion at her captivity, however, she was forced to admit that Barth had his redeeming traits. His faults were of race and training; his virtues were his own and wholly likable. Moreover, in all essential points, he was a gentleman to the very core of his soul and the marrow of his bones.
“ ‘Still of more moment than all these cures, are the graces which God has given, and continues to give every day, through the intercession of good Sainte Anne, to many a sinner for conversion to better life.’ ” Nancy’s quiet contralto voice died away, and M. Morel’s old story dropped from her hands. Barth’s eyes were closed, and she decided that he had dropped to sleep; but his voice showed her mistake.
“It’s a queer old story. Do you believe it all, nurse?”
A sudden spice of mischief came into