Chapter 39

Robert McGinnis was not dead when he was tenderly lifted from his box-like prison, but he was still unconscious. In spite of their marvelous escape from death, both he and his employer were suffering from breaks and bruises that would call for the best of care and nursing for weeks to come; and it seemed best for all concerned that this care and nursing should be given at the Mill House. A removal to Hilcrest in their present condition would not be wise, the physicians said, and the little town hospital was already overflowing with patients. There was really no place but the Mill House, and to the Mill House they were carried.

At the Mill House everything possible was done for their comfort. Two large airy rooms were given up to their use, and the entire household was devoted to their service. The children that had been brought there the night of the fire were gone, and there was no one with whom the two injured men must share the care and attention that were lavished upon them. Trained nurses were promptly sent for, and installed in their positions. Aside from these soft-stepping, whitecapped women, Margaret and the little lame Arabella were the most frequently seen in the sickrooms.

“We’re the ornamental part,” Margaret would say brightly. “We do the reading and the singing and the amusing.”

Arabella was a born nurse, so both the patients said. There was something peculiarly soothing in the soft touch of her hands and in the low tones of her voice. She was happy in it, too. Her eyes almost lost their wistful look sometimes, so absorbed would she be in her self-appointed task.

As for Margaret—Margaret was a born nurse, too, and both the patients said that; though one of the patients, it is true, complained sometimes that she did not give him half a chance to know it. Margaret certainly did not divide her time evenly. Any one could see that. No one, however—not even Frank Spencer himself—could really question the propriety of her devoting herself more exclusively to young McGinnis, the man she had promised to marry.