Miss Hitty grunted unintelligibly, gathered up her paraphernalia, and prepared to depart. "When Minty's well," she said, "I'll come back and be neighbourly."
"I hope you'll come before that," responded Miss Evelina. "I shall miss you if you don't."
Miss Hitty affected not to hear, but she was mollified, none the less.
From his patient's window, Doctor Ralph observed the enemy in full retreat, and laughed gleefully. "What is funny?" queried Araminta, She had been greatly distressed by the recitative in the back bedroom and her cheeks were flushed with fever.
"I was just laughing," said Doctor Ralph, "because your aunt has gone home and is never coming back here any more."
"Oh, Doctor Ralph! Isn't she?" There was alarm in Araminta's voice, but her grey eyes were shining.
"Never any more," he assured her, in a satisfied tone. "How long have you lived with Aunt Hitty?"
"Ever since I was a baby."
"H--m! And how old are you now?"
"Almost nineteen."
"Where did you go to school?"
"I didn't go to school. Aunt Hitty taught me, at home."
"Didn't you ever have anybody to play with?"
"Only Aunt Hitty. We used to play a quilt game. I sewed the little blocks together, and she made the big ones."
"Must have been highly exciting. Didn't you ever have a doll?"
"Oh, no!" Araminta's eyes were wide and reproachful now. "The Bible says 'thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.'"
Doctor Ralph sighed deeply, put his hands in his pockets, and paced restlessly across Araminta's bare, nun-like chamber. As though in a magic mirror, he saw her nineteen years of deprivation, her cramped and narrow childhood, her dense ignorance of life. No playmates, no dolls--nothing but Aunt Hitty. She had kept Araminta wrapped in cotton wool, mentally; shut her out from the world, and persistently shaped her toward a monastic ideal.
A child brought up in a convent could have been no more of a nun in mind and spirit than Araminta. Ralph well knew that the stern guardianship had not been relaxed a moment, either by night or by day. Miss Mehitable had a well-deserved reputation for thoroughness in whatever she undertook.
And Araminta was made for love. Ralph turned to look at her as she lay on her pillow, her brown, wavy hair rioting about her flushed face. Araminta's great grey eyes were very grave and sweet; her mouth was that of a lovable child. Her little hands were dimpled at the knuckles, in fact, as Ralph now noted; there were many dimples appertaining to Araminta.
One of them hovered for an instant about the corner of her mouth. "Why must you walk?" she asked. "Is it because you're glad your ankle isn't broken?"