One shadow haunted the verandah outside the room--Merle, white-faced and wretched, haunted by self-reproach too agonising for a child's mind. Whatever bitterness might have been in Dick's mother vanished at the dumb misery in her eyes. She put her arm about the little girl, holding her tightly, while Merle clung to her, shaken with dry sobs.
"You mustn't say that," Mrs. Lester said. "Dick would hate to hear you. And you must help us to get him well!"
"Hush!" The mother's hand was across her mouth. "I don't believe that. You must come to see him when he is stronger, and help to cheer him up."
Curiously, it became apparent after a time that Dick liked to have Merle in the room. She never talked much, and it did not seem that she knew how to smile; but a queer sympathy sprang up between them, for which words were not necessary. She developed an instinct, almost uncanny, for knowing what he wanted. At all times he was slow to voice any need--his sturdy independence was one of the hardest sacrifices he had to make on the altar of his helplessness, and it died hard. Merle divined needs almost before they shaped themselves in his mind. He would find a book, a fresh handkerchief, a piece of fruit, within reach of his hand, put there with a silence that wished to avoid thanks. She saw him feeling awkwardly for his watch, and presently a little clock from her own room was placed at an angle where he could always see it. If the blind flapped, or the door creaked, or the light fell too strongly on his eyes, it was Merle who saw it first, and went quietly to mend matters. "I think she sits there just trying to imagine what Dick may want, so that she may do it for him," Mrs. Lester said to her husband.
"That child's a born nurse, if only she had a decent bedside manner," said one nurse to the other.
But Dick liked her manner. It was "not fussy," he said. She did things quietly, and he soon learned that she hated to be thanked by anything but a glance and a nod. A silent comprehension drew them together, until, after his mother and father, he preferred Merle to any other attendant.
So the weeks went by; and at last one day the Westown doctor declared his part of the work done.
"I can't do any more for him," he said to Mr. Lester. "He has a clean bill of health now, except for the one big thing."