The old man stood staring at me and then at the blanket. His confusion under other circumstances would have been ludicrous.
“What! Not ill?” Halsey said from the step. “Thomas, I’m afraid you’ve been malingering.”
Thomas seemed to have been debating something with himself. Now he stepped out on the porch and closed the door gently behind him.
“I reckon you bettah come in, Mis’ Innes,” he said, speaking cautiously. “It’s got so I dunno what to do, and it’s boun’ to come out some time er ruther.”
He threw the door open then, and I stepped inside, Halsey close behind. In the sitting-room the old negro turned with quiet dignity to Halsey.
“You bettah sit down, sah,” he said. “It’s a place for a woman, sah.”
Things were not turning out the way Halsey expected. He sat down on the center-table, with his hands thrust in his pockets, and watched me as I followed Thomas up the narrow stairs. At the top a woman was standing, and a second glance showed me it was Rosie.
She shrank back a little, but I said nothing. And then Thomas motioned to a partly open door, and I went in.
The lodge boasted three bedrooms up-stairs, all comfortably furnished. In this one, the largest and airiest, a night lamp was burning, and by its light I could make out a plain white metal bed. A girl was asleep there—or in a half stupor, for she muttered something now and then. Rosie had taken her courage in her hands, and coming in had turned up the light. It was only then that I knew. Fever-flushed, ill as she was, I recognized Louise Armstrong.
I stood gazing down at her in a stupor of amazement. Louise here, hiding at the lodge, ill and alone! Rosie came up to the bed and smoothed the white counterpane.
“I am afraid she is worse to-night,” she ventured at last. I put my hand on the sick girl’s forehead. It was burning with fever, and I turned to where Thomas lingered in the hallway.
“Will you tell me what you mean, Thomas Johnson, by not telling me this before?” I demanded indignantly.
“Mis’ Louise wouldn’ let me,” he said earnestly. “I wanted to. She ought to ’a’ had a doctor the night she came, but she wouldn’ hear to it. Is she—is she very bad, Mis’ Innes?”
“Bad enough,” I said coldly. “Send Mr. Innes up.”
Halsey came up the stairs slowly, looking rather interested and inclined to be amused. For a moment he could not see anything distinctly in the darkened room; he stopped, glanced at Rosie and at me, and then his eyes fell on the restless head on the pillow.