So day after day, while life and health were slowly throbbing through
her veins, Maddy waited and longed for the little girl whose one visit
to her sick room seemed so much like a dream. From her grandfather she
had heard the good news of Guy Remington's generosity, and that, quite
as much as Dr. Holbrook's medicines, helped to bring the color back to
the pallid cheek and the brightness to her eyes.
She was asleep the first time the doctor came after the occasion of
Jessie's visit, and as sleep, be said, would do her more good than
anything he might prescribe, he did not awaken her; but for a long
time, as it seemed to Grandma Markham, who stood very little in awe of
the Boston doctor, he watched her as she slept, now clasping the
blue-veined wrist as he felt for the pulse, and now wiping from her
forehead the drops of sweat, or pushing back her soft, damp hair. It
would be three days before he could see her again, for a sick father
in Cambridge needed his attention, and after numerous directions as to
the administering of sundry powders and pills, he left her, feeling
that the next three days would be long ones to him. Dr. Holbrook did
not stop to analyze the nature of his interest in Maddy Clyde--an
interest so different from any he had ever felt before for his
patients; and even if he had sought to solve the riddle, he would have
said that the knowing how he had wronged her was the sole cause of his
thinking far more of her and of her case than of the thirty other
patients on his list. Dr. Holbrook was a handsome man, a thorough
scholar, and a most skillful physician; but ladies who expected from
him those little polite attentions which the sex value so highly
generally expected in vain, for he was no ladies' man, and his
language and manners were oftentimes abrupt, even when both were
prompted by the utmost kindness of heart. In his organization, too,
there was not a quick perception of what would be exactly appropriate,
and so, when, at last, he was about starting to visit Maddy again, he
puzzled his brains until they fairly ached with wondering what he
could do to give her a pleasant surprise and show that he was not as
formidable a personage as her past experience might lead her to think.
"If I could only take her something," he said, glancing ruefully
around his office. "Now, if she were Jessie, nuts and raisins might
answer--but she must not eat such trash as that," and he set himself
to think again, just as Guy Remington rode up, bearing in his hand a
most exquisite bouquet, whose fragrance filled the medicine-odored
office at once, and whose beauty elicited an exclamation of delight
even from the matter-of-fact Dr. Holbrook.