Mavis of Green Hill Part 3

CHAPTER II

Doctor Denton came in this morning.

He has been in every day since that horror-night, and we preserve an armed neutrality with one another. I had even grown rather to like him, not for himself so much as for the engaging way his hair grows, and for the sensitive, spatulate fingers of the born surgeon. But after his visit of this morning, my little liking has retreated, as those crocuses which leave warm earth prematurely are sent shuddering into nothingness by the breath of an inimical frost. Here's what happened.

The roses started, and finished it. My room is quite full of them today; everywhere I look is just a blur of color. I think that Earth is particularly lavish this season. When father brought Doctor Denton in, and left us to what he fondly termed a "nice chat," the following conversation ensued.

"Good morning, Miss Carroll!"

"Good morning, Doctor Denton!"

After a few professional inquiries as to the state of health in which the morning had found me, and my satisfactory answers,--silence! I watched him stride restlessly about my room, until I could stand it no longer. Then I said briefly,

"Lovely day, isn't it?"

Came a growl, which translated I took to signify, "Hot!"

I know now just how water feels, trying to wear away the proverbial stone. Exhausted by my efforts, I leaned back among my pillows and closed my eyes.

Presently Doctor Denton came, and drew a chair close to the bed.

"Your roses are wonderful," he remarked conversationally.

Here was a subject on which I cannot fail to become eloquent. I opened my eyes. This was a mistake, for in so doing I met that steel-blue glance which always disconcerts me.

"They are," I said, and let the opening pa.s.s.

"I'd like to see some there," he continued, very rudely pointing his finger at my face.

I put my hands hastily to my cheeks.

"Now," he announced with satisfaction, "that's more like!"

Diary, it _was_ stupid of me to blus.h.!.+

"You do not admire pallor?" I asked politely.

"Certainly not the pallor of ill-health," was the professional answer.

"It may be poetic, but it is hardly--practical."

"You do not admire poetry?"

Doctor Denton ceased twirling one of my loveliest roses between his fingers, and leaned forward to lay it carefully across my nearest braid. Gravely considering the effect, he replied,

"Not as a steady diet."

I slipped my hand under my pillow and closed it down hard over a certain volume.

"I do not suppose that surgery and poetry are particularly compatible," I volunteered, with indifference.

He lifted the rose from my braid and regarded it _silently_. When he looked up, I was astonished to see a light in the Alaskan eyes which I never dreamed could live in so cold a climate.

"You're all wrong," he answered; "there's a tremendous amount of poetry in surgery,--beauty, too, and limitless romance."

I didn't know those words were in his vocabulary. A trifle stirred by his tone, I made a little _moue_ of scepticism.

"Instruments--and white coats--and ether," I was beginning, when he interrupted me.

"And beyond them all," he finished, on a deeper note, "the poetry of healing!"

I fell silent. Somehow that view of things had never occurred to me.

Where one might see poetry, I saw only pain.

Perhaps my face showed something of what I was remembering, for suddenly he rose and leaned over me.

"Let me make you more comfortable," he suggested. And slipping a steady arm beneath my shoulders--there's more strength concealed in the slim length of him than one would imagine--he held me closely, while with the other hand he pounded my pillows and settled them firmly again. Something slid to the floor and lay there.

"Oh!" I said, as he stooped to recover it.

I put out my hands, but he was turning the book over.

"Poetry?" he said pleasantly, and raised an eyebrow. I didn't care much for his tone.

"Have you read it?" I asked belligerently.

"_The Lyric Hour_? No. Do you care, then, so much for rhymesters?"

"For this one," I answered, annoyed to confession.

"That explains it!"

"Explains what?"

"The night you were ill," Doctor Denton went on calmly to reveal, "you called me 'Richard.'"

I felt the hot color rise to my cheeks again. "Well?"

"Nothing. Only--my name happens to be Bill."

"It would be," I remarked.

"Just what do you mean by that, Miss Carroll?"

But I only smiled angelically, and asked, "When do you expect Doctor McAllister back again, Doctor Denton?"

I do not know that my tone implied all that I felt, but I saw the steel-blue eyes grow very dark, and,

"Thank you!" said Doctor Denton stiffly.