I think
you'll have to meet my wife. She's come on purpose to see you. She was
away when you were at the office."
He beckoned, and another figure moved quietly into range of the brown
eyes which were smoldering with the first advances of the fever. This
figure came around to the other side of the narrow high bed and sat down
beside it. Miss Linton looked into the face, as it seemed to her, of one
of the most attractive women she had ever seen. It was a face which
looked down at her with the sweetest sympathy in its expression, and yet
with that same high cheer which was in the face of the man on the other
side of the bed.
"My dear little girl," said a low, rich voice, "this is my room, and I
often have the pleasure of seeing my special friends use it. And I come
to see them here. When you are getting well, as you will be by and by, I
can have much nicer talks with you than if you were in a ward. Now that
you understand, you will let me have my way?".
The burning brown eyes looked into the soft black ones for a full
minute, then, with a long-drawn breath, the tense expression in the
stranger's relaxed. "I see," said the weary voice. "You are used to
having your way--just as he is. I'll have to let you because I haven't
any strength left to fight with. You are wonderfully kind. But--I'm not
a little girl."
Ellen Burns smiled. "We'll play you are, for a while," she said. "And--I
want you to know that, little or big, you are my friend.
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