man knew nothing about the fire, and was too weak to object when they told him he was to be removed to the hospital for a time.
The ambulance came and the young interne and the driver brought in the stretcher, covered Mr. Bray with a gray blanket, and took him away. The interne told the girls they could see their father in the morning and he, too, said it was mainly exhaustion that had brought about the sudden attack.
Aunt Jane had been stalking about the sloppy flat–from the ruined kitchen to the front window.
“Shut and lock that kitchen window, and lock the doors, and we’ll go out and find a lodging,” she said, briefly. “You girls can bring a bag for the night. Mine’s at the station hard by; I’m glad I didn’t bring it up here.”
It was when Lyddy shut and locked the kitchen window that she remembered the young man again. The plank had been removed, the laboratory window was closed, and the place unlighted.
“I guess he has some of the instincts of a gentleman, after all,” she told herself. “He didn’t come back to bother me after doing what he could to help.”
Two hours later the Bray girls were seated in their aunt’s comfortable room at a boarding house on a much better block than the one on which the tenement stood. Aunt Jane had ordered up tea and toast, and was sipping the one and nibbling the other contentedly before a grate fire.
“This is what I call comfort,” declared the old lady, who still kept her bonnet on–nor would she remove it save to change it for a nightcap when she went to bed.
“This is what I call comfort. A pleasant room in a house where I have no responsibilities, and enough noise outside to assure me that I am in a live town. My goodness me! when Hammond came along and wanted to marry me, and I knew I could leave Hillcrest and never have to go back – Well, I just about jumped down that man’s throat I was so eager to say ‘Yes!’ Marry him? I’d ha’ married a Choctaw Injun, if he’d promised to take me to the city.”
“Why, Aunt Jane!” exclaimed Lyddy. “Hillcrest Farm is a beautiful place. Mother took us there once to see it. Don’t you remember, ’Phemie? She loved it, too.”
“And I wish she’d had it as a gift from the old doctor,” grumbled Aunt Jane. “But it wasn’t to be. It’s never been anything but a nuisance to me, if I was born there.”
“Why, the view from the porch is the loveliest I ever saw,” said Lyddy.
“And all that romantic pile of rocks at the back of the farm!” exclaimed ’Phemie.
“Ha! what’s a view?” demanded the old lady, in her brusk way. “Just dirt and water. And that’s what they say we’re made of. I like to study human bein’s, I do; so I’d ruther have my view in town.”
“But it’s so pretty – ”
“Fudge!” snapped Aunt Jane. “I’ve seen the time, when I was a growin’ gal, and the old doctor was off to see patients, that I’ve stood on that same porch at Hillcrest and just cried for the sight of somethin’ movin’ on the face of Natur’ besides a cow.
“View, indeed!” she pursued, hotly. “If I’ve got to look at views, I want plenty of ‘life’ in ’em; and I want the human figgers to be right up close in the foreground, too!”
’Phemie laughed. “And I think it would be just blessed to get out of this noisy, dirty city, and live in a place like Hillcrest. Wouldn’t you like it, Lyd?”
“I’d love it!” declared her sister.
“Well, I declare!” exclaimed Aunt Jane, sitting bolt upright, and looking actually startled. “Ain’t that a way out, mebbe?”
“What do you mean, Aunt Jane?” asked Lydia, quickly.
“You know how I’m fixed, girls. Hammond left me just money enough so’t I can live as I like to live–and no more. The farm’s never been aught but an expense to me. Cyrus Pritchett is supposed to farm a part of it on shares; but my share of the crops never pays more’n the taxes and the repairs to the roofs of the old buildings.
“It’d be a shelter to ye. The furniture stands jest as it did in the old doctor’s day. Ye could move right in–and I expect it would mean a lease of life to your father.
“A second-hand man wouldn’t give ye ten dollars for your stuff in that flat. It’s ruined. Ye couldn’t live comfortable there any more. But if ye wanter go to Hillcrest I’m sure ye air more than welcome to the use of the place, and perhaps ye might git a bigger share of the crops out of Cyrus if ye was there, than I’ve been able to git.
“What d’you say, girls–what d’you say?”
CHAPTER III
THE DOCTOR DISPOSES
The Bray girls scarcely slept a wink that night. Not alone were they excited by the incidents of the evening, and the sudden illness of their father; but the possibilities arising out of Aunt Jane Hammond’s suggestion fired the imagination of both Lyddy and ’Phemie.
These sisters were eminently practical girls, and they came of practical stock–as note the old-fashioned names which their unromantic parents had put upon them in their helpless infancy.
Yet there is a dignity to “Lydia” and a beauty to “Euphemia” which the thoughtless may not at once appreciate.
Practical as they were, the thought of going to the old farmhouse to live–if their father could be moved to it at once–added a zest to their present situation which almost made their misfortune seem a blessing.
Their furniture was spoiled, as Aunt Jane had said. And father was sick–a self-evident fact. This sudden ill turn which Mr. Bray had suffered worried both of his daughters more than any other trouble–indeed, more than all the others in combination.
Their home was ruined–but, somehow, they would manage to find a shelter. ’Phemie would have no more work in her present position after this week, and Lyddy had secured no work at all; but fortune must smile upon their efforts and bring them work in time.
These obstacles seemed small indeed beside the awful thought of their father’s illness. How very, very weak and ill he had looked when he was carried out of the flat on that stretcher! The girls clung together in their bed in the lodging house, and whispered about it, far into the night.
“Suppose he never comes out of that hospital?” suggested ’Phemie, in a trembling voice.
“Oh, ’Phemie! don’t!” begged her sister. “He can’t be so ill as all that. It’s just a breakdown, as that doctor said. He has overworked. He–he mustn’t ever go back to that hat shop again.”
“I know,” breathed ’Phemie; “but what will he do?”
“It isn’t up to him to do anything–it’s up to us,” declared Lyddy, with some measure of her confidence returning. “Why, look at us! Two big, healthy girls, with four capable hands and the average amount of brains.
“I know, as city workers, we are arrant failures,” she continued, in a whisper, for their room was right next to Aunt Jane’s, and the partition was thin.
“Do you suppose we could do better in
