I went out of the room to get some bandages, and the doctor followed me. Returning suddenly, I ran upon an unexpected scene; up to that time, before us all, the parents had seemed perfectly stolid; but just as I opened the door, the wife and mother rose from her knees by the bed, and I have seldom seen a look more expressive of tender love than that with which her husband took her in his arms.
We have many things to learn in the next world; one of these, I am sure, will be, not to judge by the life upon the surface. There is a deep fount of feeling beneath, and often it is those whom we least suspect, who dip down into it.
I was still busy with these people, when Randolph Chance walked in upon me. His kind heart needed no prompting to join in our little attentions, and he was of especial use in getting a vehicle to take the family home.
After they had gone, and we found ourselves alone, a great embarrassment seemed to seize him in a fatal grasp.
By and by I realized that I was really getting incensed, and I was afraid I should soon be in the position of the man who went to another, whom he had ill-treated, to apologize for his bad conduct, and, "By Jove, sir"--to use his own phrase, "I hit him again."
I tried to keep my letter before my eyes. I didn't want to be forced by that inexorable tyrant--conscience--to write another. And I should, if I didn't hold on to myself, and this man didn't behave differently.
To avoid a clash, I set to work to clear away some of the confusion consequent upon the accident, and he helped me in this.
One would suppose that might serve to cool him, and it did indeed, to such an extent that, upon our settling down again, he began the most commonplace conversation, giving me some incidents of his trip; discussing the scenery; weather; population, and general aspects of Buffalo; with much more of the dryest, most disagreeable stuff, that a man ever had the temerity to use, as a means of wasting a woman's evening.
To employ a childish phrase--it best fits the occasion--I grew madder and madder, until at last matters within me rose to such a height, that when he began to tell of his brother's house in Buffalo, and to dwell upon the peculiarities of its furniture, I felt peculiar enough to hurl all of mine at him.
The number of things I thought of that evening would form a library of energetic literature. Among other resolves, I determined from that day on, if I lived till my hair whitened--lived till I raised my third or fourth crop of teeth, never, never, to give Randolph Chance another thought. There was one comfort: he did not know, nor did any one else, what a complete goose I had made of myself; but, though I had been most foolish, thanks to a sober, Puritanic ancestry, I still had myself in hand; my hysterics had been occasional and secluded, and I was not wholly gone daft. I could recover; I would! and then, if ever he came to my feet, he would learn that some things don't rise, after once they are cold.