The Second Violin Part 25

"I might have known you would care for no other," Lee said. "And you two 'live in your house at the side of the road, to be good friends to man,'--if I may adapt those homely words."

"We haven't been at it very long, but we hope to realize an ambition of the sort. It doesn't take much philanthropy to welcome you."

"You can't think what a relief it is to me to get that little sister of mine under your wing, even for a few hours."

"Tell us all about her."

Lee had not meant to begin at once upon his troubles, but his friend drew him on, and before the evening ended the doctor and Charlotte had the whole long, hard story of Lee's guardians.h.i.+p of several young brothers and sisters, his struggle to get established in his profession and make money for their support, his many anxieties in the process, and this culminating trouble in the breakdown of the younger sister, just as he thought he had her safely established in a school where she might have a happy home for several years.

Lee stopped suddenly, as if he had hardly known how long he had been talking. "I'm a pleasant guest!" he said, regret in his tone. "I meant to tell you briefly the history of Evelyn's illness, and here I've gone on unloading all my burdens of years. What do you sit there looking so benevolent and sympathetic for, beguiling a fellow into making a weak-kneed fool of himself? My worries are no greater than those of millions of other people, and here I've been laying it on with a trowel.

Forget the whole dismal story, and just give me a bit of professional advice about my little sister."

"Look here, old boy," said his friend, "don't go talking that way.

You've done just what I was anxious you should do--given me your confidence. I can go at your sister's case with a better chance of understanding it if I know this whole story. And now I'm going to thank you and send you off to bed for a good night's sleep. To-morrow we'll take Evelyn in hand."

"Bless you, Andy! You're the same old tried and true," murmured Thorne Lee, shaking hands warmly.

Then Charlotte led him away up-stairs to see his sister, who had waked and wanted him. Stooping over her bed, he felt a pair of slender arms round his neck and heard her voice whispering in his ear:

"Th.o.r.n.y, I just wanted you to know that I think Mrs. Churchill is the dearest person I ever saw, and I'm going to sleep better to-night than I have for weeks."

"Thank G.o.d for that!" thought Lee, and kissed the thin cheek of the girl with brotherly fervor.

Down-stairs in the hall a few minutes later Andrew Churchill advanced to meet his wife, as she returned to him after ministering to Evelyn Lee's wants.

"Do you know," said he, looking straight down into her eyes as she came up to him, "those words of Stevenson's--though they always fit you--seem particularly applicable to you to-night?

"Steel-true and blade-straight The great artificer Made my mate.'"

CHAPTER IV

"I think," said Doctor Churchill, leaning back in his office chair, with a mingling of the professional and the friendly in his air, "that we can get at the bottom of Evelyn's troubles without very much difficulty." He had just sent Evelyn back to Charlotte, after an hour in the office, during which he had subjected her to a minute and painstaking examination into the cause of her ill health. And now to her brother, anxiously awaiting his verdict, he spoke his mind.

"If you'll let me be very frank with you, Thorne," he said, "I'll tell you just what I think about Evelyn, and just what it seems to me is the proper course for us to take with her."

"Go ahead; it's exactly that I want," Lee declared. "I know well enough that my care of her has been seriously at fault."

"Never in intention," said Doctor Churchill, "only in the excess of your tenderness. Evelyn has lived in overheated rooms, with hot baths, insufficient exercise, and improper food. In the kindness of your heart you have been nouris.h.i.+ng a little hot-house plant, and there's no occasion for surprise that it wilts at the first blast of ordinary air."

Lee looked dismayed.

"I'm mighty sorry, Andy," he said, remorsefully.

"Don't feel too badly," was his friend's reply. "After a winter with us Evelyn will be another girl."

"What?" Lee started in his chair. "Andy, what are you thinking about?"

"Just what I say. Charlotte and I have talked it all over. We've both taken an immense liking to Evelyn and we'd honestly enjoy having her here for the winter. It only remains for you to convince Evelyn herself that we are to be trusted, and to secure her promise that we may have our way with her from first to last, and the thing is done."

"You are sure that's really all there is to it? You're not keeping anything from me?"

"Not a thing. And I'm as sure as a man can well be. That's why I don't prescribe a sanatorium for her, or anything of that sort. All she needs is a rational, every-day life of the health-making kind, such as Charlotte and I can teach her--Charlotte even more effectively than I.

Evelyn needs simply to build up a strong physical body; then these troublesome nerves will take care of themselves. Believe me, Thorne, it's refres.h.i.+ngly simple. I've not even a drug to suggest for your sister. She doesn't need any."

"But, Andy, it doesn't seem to me I can let Evelyn stay here with you all winter--the first winter of your married life. You two ought to be alone together."

"No. Charlotte and I haven't set out to go through life--even this first year of it--alone together. We are together, no matter how many we have about us. It will be only in the day's work if we keep Evelyn with us, and it's a sort of work that will pay pretty well, I fancy."

"It certainly will--in more than one kind of coin," and Lee gripped his friend's hand.

So it was settled. Evelyn agreed so joyously to the plan that her brother's last doubt of its feasibility was removed, and he went away a day later with a heart so much lighter than the one he had brought with him that it showed in his whole bearing.

"G.o.d bless you and your sweet wife, Andy Churchill," he wrote back from his first stopping-place, and when Churchill showed the letter to Charlotte she said, happily:

"We'll make the copper motto come true with this guest, won't we? Evelyn will be a very pretty girl when she loses that fragile look. Her eyes and expression are beautiful. Do you know, she accepts everything I say as if I were the G.o.ddess of Wisdom herself."

"Charlotte," said Mrs. Peyton, a few days later, coming hurriedly into Charlotte's own room, where that young woman was busy with various housewifely offices, "I've had a telegram. I'm so upset I don't know what to do. My sister is sick and her husband is away, and she's sent for me. I'm not able to do nursing--I'm not strong enough--but I don't see but that I must go."

"I'm very sorry your sister is ill," said Charlotte. "Tell me about her."

Mrs. Peyton told at length. "And what I'm to do with the children," she said, mournfully, "I don't know. Sister doesn't want them to come. But here I'm away up North and sister's out West, and the children couldn't go home alone. Besides, there's nowhere for them to go. I am their only home. Dear, dear, what shall I do?"

The front door-bell, ringing sharply, sent Charlotte down-stairs. At this moment she saw her husband coming up the street in his runabout.

When Doctor Churchill ran into his office after a case of instruments he had forgotten, his wife cast herself into his arms, in such a state of emotion that he held her close, bewildered.

"What on earth is it, dear?" he asked. "Are you laughing or crying?

Here, let me see your face."

"O Andy"--Charlotte would not let her face be seen--"it's Cousin Lula!

She's--she's--oh, she's--_going away_!"

Churchill burst into smothered laughter. "It can't be you're crying," he murmured. "Charlotte, I don't blame you. Look up and smile. I know how you must be feeling. You've been a regular heroine all these weeks."

"I'm awfully ashamed," choked Charlotte, on his shoulder, "but, O Andy, what it will seem not to have to--oh, I mustn't say it, but--"

"I know, I know!" He patted her shoulder.

"Her sister is ill, in the West somewhere. She has to go to her at once.

She wants the children to stay with us."

"She does!"