I had not seen him now for several weeks; and I never saw him look better. It immediately struck me, that with him well, it mattered comparatively little whether Mr. Thorold and I were in the same place together or not. Dr. Sandford's clear blue eye was not to be braved with impunity. No more was it to be shunned. But I needed not to shun it. I met it full now. I could, since last night. The disposal of my affairs, if it was not in me, it certainly was not in him. He met me with a smile and a look of pleasure; and sat down by me to watch the progress of my worsted work. So ostensibly; but I soon knew that he was watching not my work, but me.
"How have these weeks been with Miss Randolph? Dull?"
"There has been too much to interest, Dr. Sandford."
"Yet I see you at your Berlin wools. Pardon me - but whenever I see a lady busy with her needle and a bit of canvass, I always think she is hard up for something to think of. Pardon again, Daisy. I know you have no mercy upon slang."
"See how mistaken you are, Dr. Sandford."
"No; but in your notions about wool and canvass."
"Ah, but, don't you know that extremes meet?"
"All extremes, perhaps. I have been working worsted; for a day or two, just because I had so much to think of."
"They have been exciting days," said the doctor slowly, "to a sick man who could do nothing."
"Why not to a woman, for the same reason?"
"Why, she was turning faint here a little while ago," broke in Mrs. Sandford, "because I was giving an account of some wounded soldiers I had read about in the papers; and the major and I persuaded her to go out and take a walk to recover herself."
"The major? - that is indefinite, though you use the definite article. What major?"
"Oh, we have a number of military friends. They have kept us alive since you have been shut up. What is this one, Daisy? He is a very good one. Major Fairbairn."
"Fairbairn? I do not know him," said the doctor.
"It is not necessary that you should know everybody," said his sister-in-law. "Daisy knows him very well."
"And likes him -" said the doctor; "or he could not have a share in persuading Miss Randolph to anything."
"Yes, I like him," I said. I thought, the more friends in the army I had, the better; and also, that Dr. Sandford must not be permitted to push his lines too far.