cried Columbine, eagerly. [23] [23] “I cannot tell,” he groaned. “It is all gone.” “Oh, what a pity!” exclaimed she, springing to her feet in a flush of sympathy and baffled curiosity. “Oh, how cruel!” Then she remembered that she was absolutely disobeying the doctor’s orders, and was allowing her patient to become excited. “There, there,” she said, “how wrong of me to let you worry! Everything will come back to you when you are stronger. Now it is time for your luncheon. It is so warm and bright you may have it here if you will promise not to bother your head. For I really think,” she added, wisely, giving his wraps a deft touch or two, “that the best way to remember is not to try.” “I dare say you are right,” he agreed. “At least trying doesn’t seem to accomplish much.” She flitted away, to return a moment or two later with an old-fashioned salver, upon which, in dainty china two or three generations old, Sarah had arranged the invalid’s luncheon. She drew the rustic table up to his side and served him, while he ate with that mixture of eagerness and disinclination which marks the appetite of one in the early stages of a convalescence. [24] [24] “That pitcher,” he observed, carelessly, as she poured out the cream, “ought to belong to my past. It has a familiar look, as if it could claim acquaintance if it would only deign.” “It was my grandmother’s,” Columbine said. “When we were little, Cousin Tom used to tease me by saying my cheeks looked like those of that fat face on the handle. I was more buxom then than now.” Instead of replying, her companion laid down his spoon and looked at her in delighted amaze. Then he struck his hands together with sudden vigor. “Tom!” he cried. “Tom!” “Well?” queried she, looking at him as if he had gone distraught. “It isn’t so strange a name, is it?”
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