The Wall Between Part 27

Lucy moved toward the door; then turning she remarked gently:

"I'm so sorry, Aunt Ellen."

"Eh?"

"I'm sorry you're ill."

"Are you?" questioned the old woman, searching the girl's face with her small, flinty eyes. "Mebbe you are. You generally tell the truth. I guess if you do feel so, you're the only one; an' I don't quite see how even you can be."

"I am."

Her aunt fingered the sheet nervously.

"You're a good girl, Lucy," she presently observed in a weary tone. "You won't lose nothin' by it, neither."

Embarra.s.sed, her niece started from the room.

"Come back here a minute," muttered the woman drowsily. "I want to speak to you."

Lucy recrossed the threshold and bent over Ellen, who had sunk back on the pillows and was beckoning to her with a feeble, exhausted hand.

"You'll stay by me, won't you?" she pleaded in a whisper, for the first time displaying a consciousness of her helpless, dependent condition.

"Promise you won't desert me. I'm leavin' you the place an' ten thousand dollars."

CHAPTER XIII

MELVINY ARRIVES

When Lucy descended to the kitchen she was surprised to be confronted by Jane Howe.

"Martin told us your aunt was sick, so I came over to see what I could do," said the visitor softly. "I reckon you're all up in a heap. Sickness makes a sight of trouble. I know what it is 'cause I've had it. Let me take right hold and put the kitchen to rights for you."

The words were hearty with sincerity, and the woman's intention of rendering neighborly a.s.sistance genuine, for she promptly produced a large pinafore from under her arm and proceeded to put it on.

"You're just as good as you can be," Lucy exclaimed. "But indeed I couldn't think of letting you do my work, especially on such a hot day as this."

"Why not? Didn't I just tell you I came to help? If you wasn't to let me lend a hand when you were in a tight place, I'd feel it warn't kind of you," protested Jane, aggrieved. "Fetch the broom, an' I'll go straight to sweepin' up. My, but you have a fine big kitchen here, haven't you?"

As she rolled up her sleeves she glanced about.

"It's a monstrous house though," she went on a minute later. "You'll never be able to do all there'll be to do now, unless you have help. Let alone the work, you never can manage to lift your aunt by yourself. I reckon you'll have to send for Melviny Grey."

"And who, pray, is she?"

"Melviny? Ain't you never heard of Melviny?"

Jane regarded Lucy with astonishment.

"No."

"Oh, well, that's because you warn't born and raised here," she explained.

"Why, Melviny's one of the inst.i.tutions of Sefton Falls. Nothin' goes on in the way of tribulation without Melviny bein' to it."

"Oh, I see. She's a nurse."

"No, you couldn't really call her that," replied Jane thoughtfully. "An'

still I don't know but you might as well tag her that way as any. 'Twould be hard to tell just what Melviny is. She ain't only a nurse, 'cause she's a dressmaker; an' she ain't exactly a dressmaker, 'cause she makes bonnets; besides that she cleans house for folks, puts up pickles, and tends all the new babies. Melviny's just a sort of present help in time of trouble."

Lucy smiled.

"I believe, too, she ain't busy just now--not more'n ordinarily busy, I mean," Jane hastened to add quickly. "As I remember it, the Bartons'

baby's just come, an' the Wheeler one ain't due yet; so I guess Melviny's yours for the askin'. An' if you can get her, you'll have a whole team."

"I don't know whether Aunt Ellen----" began Lucy uneasily, but Jane interrupted her:

"Oh, it ain't to be expected your aunt will want her," she cut in serenely. "She won't want anybody. 'Twill drive her well-nigh crazy to think of spendin' the money. But 'tain't right for you to try to do all there is to be done alone, an' you mustn't undertake it. Just go right ahead an' get somebody in, whether your aunt likes it or not. That's the way I'd do if it was Martin. Besides, 'tain't as if Melviny was different.

She fits in anywhere. She warn't ever known not to. She asks no questions an' has got no opinions. She just sorter goes along as if she was walkin'

in her sleep, turnin' neither to the right nor to the left. Whatever house she's in, it's all the same to her. I believe she'd jog up to a patient with a breakfast tray if the stairs was burnin' under her. Nothin' moves her."

There was a rippling laugh from Lucy.

"We'd have to have somebody like that," she said.

"You certainly would," agreed Jane. "That's why I feel Melviny's just the one for you."

"It is so good of you to be interested."

"Bless your heart, I reckon the whole town's interested in Miss Webster bein' took down," confessed Jane naively. "But I don't deserve no credit for this plan; 'twas Martin's idea."

"Mar--your brother's?"

"Yes. Martin's awful upset 'bout your aunt bein' sick," announced Jane.

"He must 'a' heard it in the village when he was there this mornin', for the minute he got back he sent me over to urge you to get somebody in.

'Course he wouldn't come himself. That would be too much to expect. But he actually said that if you decided to fetch Melviny he'd go and get her--an' from him that means a heap. I 'most fell over backwards when he suggested it, for you know how Martin feels toward your aunt."

Lucy nodded in confusion. She had an uncomfortable sense that she was not being quite frank with Jane.

"Martin would do 'bout anything for you, Miss Lucy," the woman a.s.serted in a sudden burst of confidence. "I----"

A cry from upstairs cut short the sentence.

"Lucy!"

"Yes, Aunt Ellen, I'll be right there."