Mattie did not understand this. She understood few things at once. She saw nothing but Eva’s curving, smiling lips and bright shining eyes. She understood them with no difficulty.
“Don’t you see?” whispered Eva. “Somebody’s going to be moved up to her place, head of the department. They’re going to give me a try at it. Aren’t they good! Mattie! It’s three thousand a year! And a bonus for extra sales! And such fascinating work! I’m wild to get my hands on it and see what I can do with the salesgirls. Oh, Mattie, we can begin to lay by a little something every month for the children’s college. Perhaps we can buy a Ford that Lester can get out in with the children. Oh, Mattie!”
At this Mattie disgraced herself and showed once more, as she said apologetically, what an idiot she was by bursting into senseless, hysteric tears and having to be carried off in haste to the toilet-room to cold water and smelling salts.
“I’ve felt all squimbly this whole afternoon,” she explained, blowing her nose. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me. Old fool, I guess.”
“Well, it almost makes me feel like crying myself,” said Eva, holding out a glass of water to her. “It’s come so soon, so much sooner than I dared to hope. And it will mean so much to Lester and the children. They’d never have had a college education any other way. Why, Mattie, I’ve kept thinking all day about the hymn, ‘God moves in a mysterious way, His. …’ ”
“Don’t!” said Mattie huskily. “You’ll get me started again.”
“Of course,” Eva said now, “it’s dreadfully hard for a mother to be separated from her. …”
Mattie broke in hastily, as if to change the subject, “Eva, how is that eczema of yours lately?”
Mrs. Knapp rolled up a fashionably wide sleeve and showed a clean, white upper arm. “Dr. Merritt finally found a cure,” she said, “a new kind of ointment he heard about in a medical convention. It’s worked like a charm. I haven’t had a touch of eczema—why, in I don’t know when! It took the doctor long enough to get around to it, but he finally did.”
It was half-past five when Mrs. Farnham left the store, but still she did not start home. “Let them wait for supper!” she thought, desperately. What was supper compared to some other things! She hurried heavily along towards Dr. Merritt’s house, hoping to goodness he would be in.
He was, sitting on the porch, reading the evening paper. “Hello, Mrs. Farnham,” he said, surprised to see her. “I didn’t think I’d ever get any business out of your family. Who’s broken a leg?”
“We’re all right,” she told him. “I wanted to ask you about the Knapps. You know I’m sort of related to Mr. Knapp. I’ve been wondering what you really thought about him … whether he’ll ever be cured, I mean.”
The doctor noticed that her voice trembled as she spoke. What a good-natured creature she was, taking other people’s troubles so to heart.
He hesitated. It was not at all his habit to talk about his patients to outsiders, least of all to any such chatterbox as Mrs. Farnham. But he had thought several times lately that, if Lester Knapp were to make any progress, he would need to start a campaign to dry up the gushing spring of family sympathy. He knew all about that sort of campaign from much experience, but he was never resigned to the necessity for it. “Darn families and their sympathy!” he often said impatiently. “They ‘poor-Charlie’ and ‘poor-Mary’ more sick people into their graves than we doctors do.”
He had long suspected that well-meaning Mrs. Farnham did a good deal of “poor-Lestering” at the Knapps. Maybe this was a chance to head her off, to get her mind started along a new track. Of course he must remember to use the simplest, most elementary language with her. She was really almost an illiterate.
“I’ll tell you, Mrs. Farnham, just what I think about the case. As near as I can make out, the effusion of blood within the spinal canal has been safely absorbed, or nearly so. There seems to be no displacement or injury to the spinal bones; there is no wasting away of the muscles as would be the case if the spinal cord were injured. There is, I believe, good reason to hope that the loss of power in his legs is a sequel of organic conditions which have now passed away. The case now needs a psychic treatment rather than a mechanical.”
“Organic?” said Mrs. Farnham, faintly. The word made her think of church.
“I mean that in my opinion no physical lesion now exists in spite of the abnormal sensations which Mr. Knapp still feels. We must try toning up the general health, overcoming the shock to the nervous system. As soon as the weather permits, I shall try heliotherapy.”
Mrs. Farnham caught her breath.
“That is, treatment of the affected areas by direct exposure to sunlight. They have done wonderful things in France with that treatment in just this sort of trouble. And of course at any
