As soon as I had read the letter, I went with it open in my hand to find my wife.
“Here is Shepherd,” I said, “with a clerical sore-throat, and forced to give up his duty for a whole summer. He writes to ask me whether, as he understands I have a curate as good as myself—that is what the old fellow says—it might not suit me to take my family to his place for the summer. He assures me I should like it, and that it would do us all good. His house, he says, is large enough to hold us, and he knows I should not like to be without duty wherever I was. And so on Read the letter for yourself, and turn it over in your mind. Weir will come back so fresh and active that it will be no oppression to him to take the whole of the duty here. I will run and ask Turner whether it would be safe to move Connie, and whether the sea-air would be good for her.”
“One would think you were only twenty, husband—you make up your mind so quickly, and are in such a hurry.”
The fact was, a vision of the sea had rushed in upon me. It was many years since I had seen the sea, and the thought of looking on it once more, in its most glorious show, the Atlantic itself, with nothing between us and America, but the round of the ridgy water, had excited me so that my wife’s reproof, if reproof it was, was quite necessary to bring me to my usually quiet and sober senses. I laughed, begged old grannie’s pardon, and set off to see Turner notwithstanding, leaving her to read and ponder Shepherd’s letter.
“What do you think, Turner?” I said, and told him the case. He looked rather grave.
“When would you think of going?” he asked.
“About the beginning of June.”
“Nearly two months,” he said, thoughtfully. “And Miss Connie was not the worse for getting on the sofa yesterday?”
“The better, I do think.”
“Has she had any increase of pain since?”
“None, I quite believe; for I questioned her as to that.”
He thought again. He was a careful man, although young.
“It is a long journey.”
“She could make it by easy stages.”
“It would certainly do her good to breathe the sea-air and have such a thorough change in every way—if only it could be managed without fatigue and suffering. I think, if you can get her up every day between this and that, we shall be justified in trying it at least. The sooner you get her out of doors the better too; but the weather is scarcely fit for that yet.”
“A good deal will depend on how she is inclined, I suppose.”
“Yes. But in her case you must not mind that too much. An invalid’s instincts as to eating and drinking are more to be depended upon than those of a healthy person; but it is not so, I think with regard to anything involving effort. That she must sometimes be urged to. She must not judge that by inclination. I have had, in my short practice, two patients, who considered themselves bedlars, as you will find the common people in the part you are going to, call them—bedridden, that is. One of them I persuaded to make the attempt to rise, and although her sense of inability was anything but feigned, and she will be a sufferer to the end of her days, yet she goes about the house without much inconvenience, and I suspect is not only physically but morally the better for it. The other would not consent to try, and I believe lies there still.”
“The will has more to do with most things than people generally suppose,” I said. “Could you manage, now, do you think, supposing we resolve to make the experiment, to accompany us the first stage or two?”
“It is very likely I could. Only you must not depend upon me. I cannot tell beforehand. You yourself would teach me that I must not be a respecter of persons, you know.”
I returned to my wife. She was in Connie’s room.
“Well, my dear,” I said, “what do you think of it?”
“Of what?” she asked.
“Why, of Shepherd’s letter, of course,” I answered.
“I’ve been ordering the dinner since, Harry.”
“The dinner!” I returned with some show of contempt, for I knew my wife was only teasing me. “What’s the dinner to the Atlantic?”
“What do you mean by the Atlantic, papa?” said Connie, from whose roguish eyes I could see that her mother had told her all about it, and that she was not disinclined to get up, if only she could.
“The Atlantic, my dear, is the name given to that portion of the waters of the globe which divides Europe from America. I will fetch you the Universal Gazetteer, if you would like to consult it on the subject.”
“O papa!” laughed Connie; “you know what I mean.”
“Yes; and you know what I mean too, you squirrel!”
“But do you really mean, papa,” she said “that you will take me to the Atlantic?”
“If you will only oblige me by getting Well enough to go as soon as possible.”
The poor child half rose on her elbow, but sank back again with a moan, which I took for a cry of pain. I was beside her in a moment.
“My darling! You have hurt yourself!”
“O no, papa. I felt for the moment as if I could get up if I liked. But I soon found that I hadn’t any back or legs. O! what a plague I am to you!”
“On the contrary, you are the nicest plaything in the world, Connie. One always knows where to find you.”
She half laughed and half cried, and the two halves made a very bewitching whole.
“But,” I went on, “I mean to try whether my dolly won’t bear moving. One thing is clear, I can’t go without it. Do you think you could be got on the sofa to-day without hurting you?”
“I am sure I could, papa. I feel better today than I have felt yet. Mamma, do send for Susan, and get me up before dinner.”
When I went in after a couple of hours or so, I found her lying on the conch, propped up with pillows. She lay looking out of the window on the lawn at the back of the house. A smile hovered about her bloodless lips, and the blue of her eyes, though very gray, looked sunny. Her white face showed the whiter because her dark brown hair was all about it. We had had to cut her hair, but it had grown to her neck again.
“I have been trying to count the daisies on the lawn,” she said.
“What a sharp sight you must have, child!”
“I see them all as clear as if they were enamelled on that table before me.”
I was not so anxious to get rid of the daisies as some people are. Neither did I keep the grass quite so close shaved.
“But,” she went on, “I could not count them, for it gave me the fidgets in my feet.”
“You don’t say so!” I exclaimed.
She looked at me with some surprise, but concluding that I was only making a little of my mild fun at her expense, she laughed.
“Yes. Isn’t it a wonderful fact?” she said.
“It is a fact, my dear, that I feel ready to go on my knees and thank God for. I may be wrong, but I take it as a sign that you are beginning to recover a little. But we mustn’t make too much of it, lest I should be mistaken,” I added, checking myself, for I feared exciting her too much.
But she lay very still; only the tears rose slowly and lay shimmering in her eyes. After about five minutes, during which we were both