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Page 40
"Surely, Miss Searight, this is not the same case I read of in
yesterday's paper--it must be, too--Medford was the name of the place.
That case has killed one nurse already, and now the second one is down.
Don't tell me you are going to take the same case."
"It is the same case," answered Lloyd, "and, of course, I am going to
take it. Did you ever hear of a nurse doing otherwise? Why, it would
seem--seem so--funny--"
There was no dissuading her, and Campbell and Hattie soon ceased even to
try. She was impatient to be gone. The station was close at hand, and
she would not hear of taking the carriage thither. However, before she
left them she recurred again to the subject of her letter to Mr.
Campbell, and then and there it was decided that Hattie and her maid
should spend the following ten days at Lloyd's place in Bannister. The
still country air, now that Hattie was able to take the short journey,
would be more to her than many medicines, and the ponies and Lloyd's
phaeton would be left there with Lewis for her use.
"And write often, won't you, Miss Searight?" exclaimed Hattie as Lloyd
was saying good-bye. Lloyd shook her head.
"Not that of all things," she answered. "If I did that we might have
you, too, down with typhoid. But you may write to me, and I hope you
will," and she gave Hattie her new address.
"Harriet," said Campbell as the carriage drove back across the square,
the father and daughter waving their hands to Lloyd, briskly on her way
to the railroad station, "Harriet."
"Yes, papa."
"There goes a noble woman. Pluck, intelligence, strong will--she has
them all--and a great big heart that--heart that--" He clipped the end
of a cigar thoughtfully and fell silent.
A day or two later, as Hattie was sitting in her little wheel-chair on
the veranda of Mrs. Applegate's house watching Charley-Joe hunting
grasshoppers underneath the currant bushes, she was surprised by the
sharp closing of the front gate. A huge man with one squint eye and a
heavy, square-cut jaw was coming up the walk, followed by a
strange-looking dog. Charley-Joe withdrew, swiftly to his particular
hole under the veranda, moving rapidly, his body low to the ground, and
taking an unnecessary number of very short steps.
The little city-bred girl distinguished the visitor from a country man
at once. Hattie had ideas of her own as to propriety, and so rose to her
feet as Bennett came up, and after a moment's hesitation made him a
little bow. Bennett at once gravely took off his cap.
"Excuse me," he said as though Hattie were twenty-five instead of
twelve. "Is Miss Searight at home?"
"Oh," exclaimed Hattie, delighted, "do you know Miss Searight? She was
my nurse when I was so sick--because you know I had hip disease and
there was an operation. No, she's not here any more. She's gone away,
gone back to the City."
"Gone back to the City?"
"Yes, three or four days ago. But I'm going to write to her this
afternoon. Shall I say who called?" Then, without waiting for a reply,
she added, "I guess I had better introduce myself. My name is Harriet
Campbell, and my papa is Craig V. Campbell, of the Hercules Wrought
Steel Company in the City. Won't you have a chair?"
The little convalescent and the arctic explorer shook hands with great
solemnity.
"I'm so pleased to meet you," said Bennett. "I haven't a card, but my
name is Ward Bennett--of the Freja expedition," he added. But, to his
relief, the little girl had not heard of him.
"Very well," she said, "I'll tell Miss Searight Mr. Bennett called."
"No," he replied, hesitatingly, "no, you needn't do that."
"Why, she won't answer my letter, you know," explained Hattie,
"because she is afraid her letters would give me typhoid fever,
that they might"--she continued carefully, hazarding a remembered
phrase--"carry the contagion. You see she has gone to nurse a dreadful
case of typhoid fever out at Medford, near the City, and we're so worried
and anxious about her--papa and I. One nurse that had this case has died
already and another one has caught the disease and is very sick, and Miss
Searight, though she knew just how dangerous it was, would go, just
like--like--" Hattie hesitated, then confused memories of her school
reader coming to her, finished with "like Casabianca."
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