Sowing Seeds in Danny Part 17

Camilla wore a s.h.i.+rt-waist suit of brown, and the neatest collar and tie, and Jim suddenly became conscious that his boots were not blackened.

Camilla left him in the hall, while she went into the library and read the contents of the letter to Mr. and Mrs. Francis.

She returned presently and with a pleasant smile said, holding out her hand, "You are Mr. Russell. I am glad to meet you. Tell Pearl the flowers will be sent to-night."

She opened the door as she spoke, and Jim found himself going down the steps, wondering just how it happened that he had not said one word--he who was usually so ready of speech.

"Well, well," he said to himself as he untied Chiniquy, "little Jimmy's lost his tongue, I wonder why?"

All the way home the vision of lovely dark eyes and rippling brown hair with just a hint of red in it, danced before him. Chiniquy, taking advantage of his master's preoccupation, wandered aimlessly against a barbed wire, taking very good care not to get too close to it himself.

Jim came to himself just in time to save his leg from a prod from the spikes.

"Chiniquy, Chiniquy," he said gravely, "I understand now something of the hatred the French bear your ill.u.s.trious namesake. But no matter what the man's sins may have been, surely he did not deserve to have a little flea-bitten, mangey, treacherous, mouse-coloured deceiver like you named for him."

When Camilla had read Pearl's letter to Mr. and Mrs. Francis, the latter was all emotion. How splendid of her, so sympathetic, so full of the true inwardness of Christian love, and the sweet message of the poppy, the emblem of sleep, so prophetic of that other sleep that knows no waking! Is it not a pagan thought, that? What tender recollections they will bring the poor sufferer of her far away, happy childhood home!

Mrs. Francis's face was s.h.i.+ning with emotion as she spoke. Then she became dreamy.

"I wonder is her soul attune to the melodies of life, and will she feel the love vibrations of the ether?"

Mr. Francis had noiselessly left the room when Camilla had finished her rapid explanation. He returned with his little valise in his hand.

He stood a moment irresolutely looking, in his helpless dumb way, at his wife, who was so beautifully expounding the message of the flowers.

Camilla handed him the box. She understood.

Mrs. Francis noticed the valise in her husband's hand.

"How very suddenly you make up your mind, James," she said. "Are you actually going away on the train to-night? Really James, I believe I shall write a little sketch for our church paper. Pearl's thoughtfulness has moved me, James. It really has touched me deeply. If you were not so engrossed in business, James, I really believe it would move you; but men are so different from us, Camilla. They are not so soulful. Perhaps it is just as well, but really sometimes, James, I fear you give business too large a place in your life. It is all business, business, business."

Mrs. Francis opened her desk, and drawing toward her her gold pen and dainty letter paper, began her article.

Camilla followed Mr. Francis into the hall, and helped him to put on his overcoat. She handed him his hat with something like reverence in her manner.

"You are upon the King's business to-night," she said, with s.h.i.+ning eyes, as she opened the door for him.

He opened his mouth as if to speak, but only waved his hand with an impatient gesture and was gone.

CHAPTER XVI

HOW POLLY WENT HOME

"We'll have to move poor Polly, if she lives thro' the night," the nurse said to the house doctor in the hospital that night. "She is making all the patients homesick. To hear her calling for her mother or for 'someone from 'ome' is hard on the sick and well."

"What are her chances do you think?" the doctor asked gravely.

He was a wiry little man with a face like leather, but his touch brought healing and his presence, hope.

"She is dying of homesickness as well as typhoid," the nurse said sadly, "and she seems so anxious to get better, poor thing! She often says 'I can't die miss, for what'll happen mother.' But for the last two days, in her delirium, she seems to be worrying more about her work and her flowers. I think they were pretty hard people she lived with.

'Surely she'll praise me this time,' she often says, 'I've tried my 'ardest.' The strenuous life has been too much for poor Polly. Listen to her now!"

Polly was singing. Clear and steady and sweet, her voice rang over the quiet ward, and many a fevered face was raised to listen. Polly's mind was wandering in the shadows, but she still sang the songs of home in a strange land:

Down by the biller there grew a green willer A weeping all night with the bank for a piller.

And over and over again she sang with a wavering cadence, incoherently sometimes, but always with tender pleading, something about "where the stream was a-flowin', the gentle kine lowin', and over my grave keep the green willers growin'."

"It is pathetic to hear her," the nurse said, "and now listen to her asking about her poppies."

"In the box, miss; I brought the seed hacross the hocean, and they wuz beauties, they wuz wot came hup. They'll be noddin' and wavin' now red and 'andsome, if she hasn't cut them. She wouldn't cut them, would she, miss? She couldn't 'ave the 'eart, I think."

"No indeed, she hasn't cut them," the nurse declared with decision, taking Polly's burning hand tenderly in hers. "No one could cut down such beauties. What nonsense to think of such a thing, Polly. They're blooming, I tell you, red and handsome, almost as tall as you are, Polly."

The office-boy touched the nurse's arm.

"A gentleman who gave no name left this box for one of the typhoid patients," he said, handing her the box.

The nurse read the address and the box trembled in her hands as she nervously opened it and took out the contents.

"Polly, Polly!" she cried, excitedly, "didn't I tell you they were blooming, red and handsome."

But Polly's eyes were burning with delirium and her lips babbled meaninglessly.

The nurse held the poppies over her.

Her arms reached out caressingly.

"Oh, miss!" she cried, her mind coming back from the shadows. "They have come at last, the darlin's, the sweethearts, the loves, the beauties." She held them in a close embrace. "They're from 'ome, they're from 'ome!" she gasped painfully, for her breath came with difficulty now. "I can't just see them, miss, the lights is movin' so much, and the way the bed 'eaves, but, tell me, miss, is there a little silky one, hedged with w'ite? It was mother's favourite one of hall.

I'd like to 'ave it in my 'and, miss."

The nurse put it in her hand. She was only a young nurse and her face was wet with tears.

"It's like 'avin' my mother's 'and, miss, it is," she murmured softly.

"Ye wouldn't mind the dark if ye 'ad yer mother's 'and, would ye, miss?"

And then the nurse took Polly's throbbing head in her strong young arms, and soothed its restless tossing with her cool soft touch, and told her through her tears of that other Friend, who would go with her all the way.

"I'm that 'appy, miss," Polly murmured faintly. "It's like I was goin'

'ome. Say that again about the valley," and the nurse repeated tenderly that promise of incomparable sweetness:

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil, for thou art with me, thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

"It's just like 'avin' mother's 'and to 'old the little silky one,"

Polly murmured sleepily.

The nurse put the poppies beside Polly's face on the pillow, and drawing a screen around her went on to the next patient. A case of urgent need detained her at the other end of the ward, and it was not until the dawn was s.h.i.+ning blue in the windows that she came back on her rounds.