It was not until after the doctor had gone that Griswold was able to face the new misfortune with anything like a sober measure of equanimity. Imaginative to the degree which facilely transforms the suppositional into the real, he was still singularly free from superstition. Nevertheless, all the legends clustering about the proverbial slipperiness of ill-gotten gains paraded themselves insistently. It was only by the supremest effort of will that he could push them aside and address himself to the practical matter of getting well. That was the first thing to be considered; with or without money, he must relieve the Griersons of their self-assumed burden at the earliest possible moment.
This was the thought with which he sank into the first natural sleep of convalescence. But during the days which followed, Margery was able to modify it without dulling the keen edge of his obligation. What perfect hospitality could do was done, without ostentation, with the exact degree of spontaneity which made it appear as a service rendered to a kinsman. It was one of the gifts of the daughter of men to be able to ignore all the middle distances between an introduction and a friendship; and by the time Griswold was strong enough to let the big, gentle Swede plant him in a Morris chair in the sun-warmed bay-window, the friendship was a fact accomplished.
"Do you know, you're the most wonderful person I have ever known?" he said to Margery, on the first of the sunning days when she had come to perch in the window-seat opposite his chair.
"It's propinquity," she laughed. "You haven't seen any other woman for days and weeks. Wait until you are strong enough to come down to one of my 'evenings.'"
"Then it's the unaccustomed. You are from the well-behaved East. There are some people even here in Wahaska who will tell you that I have never properly learned how to behave."
"Your looking-glass will tell you why they say that," he said gravely.
Her smile showed the perfect rows of white teeth. "You are recovering rapidly, Mr. Kenneth; don't you think so? Or was that only a little return of the fever?"
He brushed the bit of mockery aside. "I want to be serious to-day--if you'll let me. There are a lot of things I'd like to know."