ompany
meant disaster to him.

They dragged him away before he caught more than a glimpse of what they
had in their midst--the limp, white-faced thing in the silly pink dress
he had liked. She had started home by the short way, they told him--the
short way over the old bridge--the bridge that every one knew was not
safe. And how it happened no one could say--perhaps she had stumbled and
caught hold of the rotten railing, and it had given under her hand; at
any rate they had found her in the dry river-bottom, thirty feet below.
He looked at them very calmly as they finished. "She is dead," he said
quietly, "there is no need to tell me that." And then, suddenly, without
a cry or any warning, he toppled over against the man nearest him.

But she was not dead. He came out of his delirium and fever three weeks
later to find her limping around the room, looking a little pale and
tired, but very pretty in some sort of ruffled white dress, with her
hair done up in the puffs and rolls he had always liked. People had been
very good, she told him when he was strong enough to listen and
understand. The doctor had said that he could eat eggs before he could
eat anything else--so everybody had been sending fresh eggs. Mary said
she was going to buy an incubator and start to raising chickens--they
couldn't eat half the eggs that were sent in, even if they ate nothing
but custard. Mary was the pretty girl that they had seen walking with
Mr. Brown one Sunday, and had thought would be a nice person to have
around. She was going to stay with them all winter; Gertrude was going
to teach her German and music, and she was going to teach Gertrude how
to cook. She was doing all the work just now, she and the neighbors.
Mrs. Ferry came in every morning to scrub the kitchen and black the
stove. They said Gertrude must keep her hands nice--Philip had seemed
more worried about her hands than about anything else, all the time he
was sick. Did he see how soft and white they were? She had been washing
them in buttermilk--the doctor's wife had suggested that--and putting
some sort of cream on them that Mr. Gilson, the young man who clerked in
the drug store, had sent up by Mr. Brown. Mr. Brown had been so kind--it
had been he who had sat up with Philip when his fever was at its
worst--he had chopped all the ice that they had used from first to last.
He was out in the back yard now, fixing--but there, that was to be a
surprise.

Allison lay very sti