“I’m all right,” said Johnny Rosenfeld.
And, when they offered him whiskey: “Away
with the fire-water. I am no drinker. I—I—”
A spasm of pain twisted his face. “I guess
I’ll get up.” With his arms he lifted
himself to a sitting position, and fell back again.
“God!” he said. “I can’t
move my legs.”
By Christmas Day Sidney was back in the hospital,
a little wan, but valiantly determined to keep her
life to its mark of service. She had a talk with
K. the night before she left.
Katie was out, and Sidney had put the dining-room
in order. K. sat by the table and watched her
as she moved about the room.
The past few weeks had been very wonderful to him:
to help her up and down the stairs, to read to her
in the evenings as she lay on the couch in the sewing-room;
later, as she improved, to bring small dainties home
for her tray, and, having stood over Katie while she
cooked them, to bear them in triumph to that upper
room—he had not been so happy in years.
And now it was over. He drew a long breath.
“I hope you don’t feel as if you must
stay on,” she said anxiously. “Not
that we don’t want you—you know better
than that.”
“There is no place else in the whole world that
I want to go to,” he said simply.
“I seem to be always relying on somebody’s
kindness to—to keep things together.
First, for years and years, it was Aunt Harriet; now
it is you.”
“Don’t you realize that, instead of your
being grateful to me, it is I who am undeniably grateful
to you? This is home now. I have lived
around—in different places and in different
ways. I would rather be here than anywhere else
in the world.”
But he did not look at her. There was so much
that was hopeless in his eyes that he did not want
her to see. She would be quite capable, he told
himself savagely, of marrying him out of sheer pity
if she ever guessed. And he was afraid—afraid,
since he wanted her so much—that he would
be fool and weakling enough to take her even on those
terms. So he looked away.
Everything was ready for her return to the hospital.
She had been out that day to put flowers on the quiet
grave where Anna lay with folded hands; she had made
her round of little visits on the Street; and now her
suit-case, packed, was in the hall.
“In one way, it will be a little better for
you than if Christine and Palmer were not in the house.
You like Christine, don’t you?”
“Very much.”
“She likes you, K. She depends on you, too,
especially since that night when you took care of
Palmer’s arm before we got Dr. Max. I often
think, K., what a good doctor you would have been.
You knew so well what to do for mother.”
She broke off. She still could not trust her
voice about her mother.
“Palmer’s arm is going to be quite straight.
Dr. Ed is so proud of Max over it. It was a
bad fracture.”
