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What Katy Did Next

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"I will post thee in the railroad stations," continued the doctor,
implacably; "I will bid my patients to write letters to all their
friends, warning them against thy flea-ridden Del Mondo; I will apprise
the steamboat companies at Genoa and Naples. Thou shalt see what comes
of it,--truly, thou shalt see."

Having thus reduced Madame Frulini to powder, the doctor now
condescended to take breath and listen to her appeals for mercy; and
presently he brought her in with her mouth full of protestations and
apologies, and assurances that the ladies had mistaken her meaning, she
had only spoken for the good of all; nothing was further from her
intention than that they should be disturbed or offended in any way, and
she and all her household were at the service of "the little sick angel
of God." After which the doctor dismissed her with an air of
contemptuous tolerance, and laid his hand on the door of Amy's room.
Behold, it was locked!

"Oh, I forgot," cried Katy, laughing; and she pulled the key out of
her pocket.

"You are a hee-roine, mademoiselle," said Dr. Hilary. "I watched you as
you faced that tigress, and your eyes were like a swordsman's as he
regards his enemy's rapier."

"Oh, she was so brave, and such a help!" said Mrs. Ashe, kissing her
impulsively. "You can't think how she has stood by me all through, Ned,
or what a comfort she has been."

"Yes, I can," said Ned Worthington, with a warm, grateful look at Katy.
"I can believe anything good of Miss Carr."

"But where have _you_ been all this time?" said Katy, who felt this
flood of compliment to be embarrassing; "we have so wondered at not
hearing from you."

"I have been off on a ten-days' leave to Corsica for moufflon-shooting,"
replied Mr. Worthington. "I only got Polly's telegrams and letters day
before yesterday, and I came away as soon as I could get my leave
extended. It was a most unlucky absence. I shall always regret it."

"Oh, it is all right now that you have come," his sister said, leaning
her head on his arm with a look of relief and rest which was good to
see. "Everything will go better now, I am sure."

"Katy Carr has behaved like a perfect angel," she told her brother when
they were alone.

"She is a trump of a girl. I came in time for part of that scene with
the landlady, and upon my word she was glorious! I didn't suppose she
could look so handsome."

"Have the Pages left Nice yet?" asked his sister, rather irrelevantly.

"No,--at least they were there on Thursday, but I think that they were
to start to-day."

Mr. Worthington answered carelessly, but his face darkened as he spoke.
There had been a little scene in Nice which he could not forget. He was
sitting in the English garden with Lilly and her mother when his
sister's telegrams were brought to him; and he had read them aloud,
partly as an explanation for the immediate departure which they made
necessary and which broke up an excursion just arranged with the ladies
for the afternoon. It is not pleasant to have plans interfered with; and
as neither Mrs. Page nor her daughter cared personally for little Amy,
it is not strange that disappointment at the interruption of their
pleasure should have been the first impulse with them. Still, this did
not excuse Lilly's unstudied exclamation of "Oh, bother!" and though she
speedily repented it as an indiscretion, and was properly sympathetic,
and "hoped the poor little thing would soon be better," Amy's uncle
could not forget the jarring impression. It completed a process of
disenchantment which had long been going on; and as hearts are sometimes
caught at the rebound, Mrs. Ashe was not so far astray when she built
certain little dim sisterly hopes on his evident admiration for Katy's
courage and this sudden awakening to a sense of her good looks.

But no space was left for sentiment or match-making while still Amy's
fate hung in the balance, and all three of them found plenty to do
during the next fortnight. The fever did not turn on the twenty-first
day, and another weary week of suspense set in, each day bringing a
decrease of the dangerous symptoms, but each day as well marking a
lessening in the childish strength which had been so long and severely
tested. Amy was quite conscious now, and lay quietly, sleeping a great
deal and speaking seldom. There was not much to do but to wait and hope;
but the flame of hope burned low at times, as the little life flickered
in its socket, and seemed likely to go out like a wind-blown torch.

Now and then Lieutenant Worthington would persuade his sister to go
with him for a few minutes' drive or walk in the fresh air, from which
she had so long been debarred, and once or twice he prevailed on Katy
to do the same; but neither of them could bear to be away long from
Amy's bedside.

Intimacy grows fast when people are thus united by a common anxiety,
sharing the same hopes and fears day after day, speaking and thinking of
the same thing. The gay young officer at Nice, who had counted so little
in Katy's world, seemed to have disappeared, and the gentle,
considerate, tender-hearted fellow who now filled his place was quite a
different person in her eyes. Katy began to count on Ned Worthington as
a friend who could be trusted for help and sympathy and comprehension,
and appealed to and relied upon in all emergencies. She was quite at
ease with him now, and asked him to do this and that, to come and help
her, or to absent himself, as freely as if he had been Dorry or Phil.

He, on his part, found this easy intimacy charming. In the reaction of
his temporary glamour for the pretty Lilly, Katy's very difference from
her was an added attraction. This difference consisted, as much as
anything else, in the fact that she was so truly in earnest in what she
said and did. Had Lilly been in Katy's place, she would probably have
been helpful to Mrs. Ashe and kind to Amy so far as in her lay; but the
thought of self would have tinctured all that she did and said, and the
need of keeping to what was tasteful and becoming would have influenced
her in every emergency, and never have been absent from her mind.

Katy, on the contrary, absorbed in the needs of the moment, gave little
heed to how she looked or what any one was thinking about her. Her habit
of neatness made her take time for the one thorough daily dressing,--the
brushing of hair and freshening of clothes, which were customary with
her; but, this tax paid to personal comfort, she gave little further
heed to appearances. She wore an old gray gown, day in and day out,
which Lilly would not have put on for half an hour without a large
bribe, so unbecoming was it; but somehow Lieutenant Worthington grew to
like the gray gown as a part of Katy herself. And if by chance he
brought a rose in to cheer the dim stillness of the sick-room, and she
tucked it into her buttonhole, immediately it was as though she were
decked for conquest. Pretty dresses are very pretty on pretty
people,--they certainly play an important part in this queer little
world of ours; but depend upon it, dear girls, no woman ever has
established so distinct and clear a claim on the regard of her lover as
when he has ceased to notice or analyze what she wears, and just accepts
it unquestioningly, whatever it is, as a bit of the dear human life
which has grown or is growing to be the best and most delightful thing
in the world to him.

The gray gown played its part during the long anxious night when they
all sat watching breathlessly to see which way the tide would turn with
dear little Amy. The doctor came at midnight, and went away to come
again at dawn. Mrs. Swift sat grim and watchful beside the pillow of her
charge, rising now and then to feel pulse and skin, or to put a spoonful
of something between Amy's lips. The doors and windows stood open to
admit the air. In the outer room all was hushed. A dim Roman lamp, fed
with olive oil, burned in one corner behind a screen. Mrs. Ashe lay on
the sofa with her eyes closed, bearing the strain of suspense in
absolute silence. Her brother sat beside her, holding in his one of the
hot hands whose nervous twitches alone told of the surgings of hope and
fear within. Katy was resting in a big chair near by, her wistful eyes
fixed on Amy's little figure seen in the dim distance, her ears alert
for every sound from the sick-room.

So they watched and waited. Now and then Ned Worthington or Katy would
rise softly, steal on tiptoe to the bedside, and come back to whisper to
Mrs. Ashe that Amy had stirred or that she seemed to be asleep. It was
one of the nights which do not come often in a lifetime, and which
people never forget. The darkness seems full of meaning; the hush, of
sound. God is beyond, holding the sunrise in his right hand, holding the
sun of our earthly hopes as well,--will it dawn in sorrow or in joy? We
dare not ask, we can only wait.

A faint stir of wind and a little broadening of the light roused Katy
from a trance of half-understood thoughts. She crept once more into
Amy's room. Mrs. Swift laid a warning finger on her lips; Amy was
sleeping, she said with a gesture. Katy whispered the news to the still
figure on the sofa, then she went noiselessly out of the room. The great
hotel was fast asleep; not a sound stirred the profound silence of the
dark halls. A longing for fresh air led her to the roof.

There was the dawn just tingeing the east. The sky, even thus early,
wore the deep mysterious blue of Italy. A fresh _tramontana_ was
blowing, and made Katy glad to draw her shawl about her.

Far away in the distance rose the Alban Hills above the dim Campagna,
with the more lofty Sabines beyond, and Soracte, clear cut against the
sky like a wave frozen in the moment of breaking. Below lay the ancient
city, with its strange mingling of the old and the new, of past things
embedded in the present; or is it the present thinly veiling the rich
and mighty past,--who shall say?

Faint rumblings of wheels and here and there a curl of smoke showed that
Rome was waking up. The light insensibly grew upon the darkness. A pink
flush lit up the horizon. Florio stirred in his lair, stretched his
dappled limbs, and as the first sun-ray glinted on the roof, raised
himself, crossed the gravelled tiles with soundless feet, and ran his
soft nose into Katy's hand. She fondled him for Amy's sake as she stood
bent over the flower-boxes, inhaling the scent of the mignonette and
gilly-flowers, with her eyes fixed on the distance; but her heart was at
home with the sleepers there, and a rush of strong desire stirred her.
Would this dreary time come to an end presently, and should they be set
at liberty to go their ways with no heavy sorrow to press them down, to
be care-free and happy again in their own land?

A footstep startled her. Ned Worthington was coming over the roof on
tiptoe as if fearful of disturbing somebody. His face looked resolute
and excited.

"I wanted to tell you," he said in a hushed voice, "that the doctor is
here, and he says Amy has no fever, and with care may be considered out
of danger."

"Thank God!" cried Katy, bursting into tears. The long fatigue, the
fears kept in check so resolutely, the sleepless night just passed, had
their revenge now, and she cried and cried as if she could never stop,
but with all the time such joy and gratitude in her heart! She was
conscious that Ned had his arm round her and was holding both her hands
tight; but they were so one in the emotion of the moment that it did not
seem strange.

"How sweet the sun looks!" she said presently, releasing herself, with a
happy smile flashing through her tears; "it hasn't seemed really bright
for ever so long. How silly I was to cry! Where is dear Polly? I must go
down to her at once. Oh, what does she say?"




CHAPTER XI.

NEXT.


Lieut. Worthington's leave had nearly expired. He must rejoin his
ship; but he waited till the last possible moment in order to help his
sister through the move to Albano, where it had been decided that Amy
should go for a few days of hill air before undertaking the longer
journey to Florence.

It was a perfect morning in late March when the pale little invalid was
carried in her uncle's strong arms, and placed in the carriage which was
to take them to the old town on the mountain slopes which they had seen
shining from far away for so many weeks past. Spring had come in her
fairest shape to Italy. The Campagna had lost its brown and tawny hues
and taken on a tinge of fresher color. The olive orchards were budding
thickly. Almond boughs extended their dazzling shapes across the blue
sky. Arums and acanthus and ivy filled every hollow, roses nodded from
over every gate, while a carpet of violets and cyclamen and primroses
stretched over the fields and freighted every wandering wind with
fragrance.

When once the Campagna with its long line of aqueducts, arches, and
hoary tombs was left behind, and the carriage slowly began to mount the
gradual rises of the hill, Amy revived. With every breath of the fresher
air her eyes seemed to brighten and her voice to grow stronger. She held
Mabel up to look at the view; and the sound of her laugh, faint and
feeble as it was, was like music to her mother's ears.

Amy wore a droll little silk-lined cap on her head, over which a downy
growth of pale-brown fuzz was gradually thickening. Already it showed a
tendency to form into tiny rings, which to Amy, who had always hankered
for curls, was an extreme satisfaction. Strange to say, the same thing
exactly had happened to Mabel; her hair had grown out into soft little
round curls also! Uncle Ned and Katy had ransacked Rome for this
baby-wig, which filled and realized all Amy's hopes for her child. On
the same excursion they had bought the materials for the pretty spring
suit which Mabel wore, for it had been deemed necessary to sacrifice
most of her wardrobe as a concession to possible fever-germs. Amy
admired the pearl-colored dress and hat, the fringed jacket and little
lace-trimmed parasol so much, that she was quite consoled for the loss
of the blue velvet costume and ermine muff which had been the pride of
her heart ever since they left Paris, and whose destruction they had
scarcely dared to confess to her.

So up, up, up, they climbed till the gateway of the old town was passed,
and the carriage stopped before a quaint building once the residence of
the Bishop of Albano, but now known as the Hôtel de la Poste. Here they
alighted, and were shown up a wide and lofty staircase to their rooms,
which were on the sunny side of the house, and looked across a walled
garden, where roses and lemon trees grew beside old fountains guarded by
sculptured lions and heathen divinities with broken noses and a scant
supply of fingers and toes, to the Campagna, purple with distance and
stretching miles and miles away to where Rome sat on her seven hills,
lifting high the Dome of St. Peter's into the illumined air.

Nurse Swift said that Amy must go to bed at once, and have a long rest.
But Amy nearly wept at the proposal, and declared that she was not a bit
tired and couldn't sleep if she went to bed ever so much. The change of
air had done her good already, and she looked more like herself than for
many weeks past. They compromised their dispute on a sofa, where Amy,
well wrapped up, was laid, and where, in spite of her protestations, she
presently fell asleep, leaving the others free to examine and arrange
their new quarters.

Such enormous rooms as they were! It was quite a journey to go from one
side of them to another. The floors were of stone, with squares of
carpet laid down over them, which looked absurdly small for the great
spaces they were supposed to cover. The beds and tables were of the
usual size, but they seemed almost like doll furniture because the
chambers were so big. A quaint old paper, with an enormous pattern of
banyan trees and pagodas, covered the walls, and every now and then
betrayed by an oblong of regular cracks the existence of a hidden door,
papered to look exactly like the rest of the wall.

These mysterious doors made Katy nervous, and she never rested till she
had opened every one of them and explored the places they led to. One
gave access to a queer little bathroom. Another led, through a narrow
dark passage, to a sort of balcony or loggia overhanging the garden. A
third ended in a dusty closet with an artful chink in it from which you
could peep into what had been the Bishop's drawing-room but which was
now turned into the dining-room of the hotel. It seemed made for
purposes of espial; and Katy had visions of a long line of reverend
prelates with their ears glued to the chink, overhearing what was being
said about them in the apartment beyond.

The most surprising of all she did not discover till she was going to
bed on the second night after their arrival, when she thought she knew
all about the mysterious doors and what they led to. A little
unexplained draught of wind made her candle flicker, and betrayed the
existence of still another door so cunningly hid in the wall pattern
that she had failed to notice it. She had quite a creepy feeling as she
drew her dressing-gown about her, took a light, and entered the narrow
passage into which it opened. It was not a long passage, and ended
presently in a tiny oratory. There was a little marble altar, with a
kneeling-step and candlesticks and a great crucifix above. Ends of wax
candles still remained in the candlesticks, and bunches of dusty paper
flowers filled the vases which stood on either side of them. A faded
silk cushion lay on the step. Doubtless the Bishop had often knelt
there. Katy felt as if she were the first person to enter the place
since he went away. Her common-sense told her that in a hotel bedroom
constantly occupied by strangers for years past, some one _must_ have
discovered the door and found the little oratory before her; but
common-sense is sometimes less satisfactory than romance. Katy liked to
think that she was the first, and to "make believe" that no one else
knew about it; so she did so, and invented legends about the place which
Amy considered better than any fairy story.

Before he left them Lieutenant Worthington had a talk with his sister
in the garden. She rather forced this talk upon him, for various
things were lying at her heart about which she longed for explanation;
but he yielded so easily to her wiles that it was evident he was not
averse to the idea.

"Come, Polly, don't beat about the bush any longer," he said at last,
amused and a little irritated at her half-hints and little feminine
_finesses_. "I know what you want to ask; and as there's no use
making a secret of it, I will take my turn in asking. Have I any chance,
do you think?"

"Any chance?--about Katy, do you mean? Oh, Ned, you make me so happy."

"Yes; about her, of course."

"I don't see why you should say 'of course,'" remarked his sister, with
the perversity of her sex, "when it's only five or six weeks ago that I
was lying awake at night for fear you were being gobbled up by that
Lilly Page."

"There was a little risk of it," replied her brother, seriously. "She's
awfully pretty and she dances beautifully, and the other fellows were
all wild about her, and--well, you know yourself how such things go. I
can't see now what it was that I fancied so much about her, I don't
suppose I could have told exactly at the time; but I can tell without
the smallest trouble what it is in--the other."

"In Katy? I should think so," cried Mrs. Ashe, emphatically; "the two
are no more to be compared than--than--well, bread and syllabub! You can
live on one, and you can't live on the other."

"Come, now, Miss Page isn't so bad as that. She is a nice girl enough,
and a pretty girl too,--prettier than Katy; I'm not so far gone that I
can't see that. But we won't talk about her, she's not in the present
question at all; very likely she'd have had nothing to say to me in any
case. I was only one out of a dozen, and she never gave me reason to
suppose that she cared more for me than the rest. Let us talk about this
friend of yours; have I any chance at all, do you think, Polly?"

"Ned, you are the dearest boy! I would rather have Katy for a sister
than any one else I know. She's so nice all through,--so true and sweet
and satisfactory."

"She is all that and more; she's a woman to tie to for life, to be
perfectly sure of always. She would make a splendid wife for any man.
I'm not half good enough for her; but the question is,--and you haven't
answered it yet, Polly,--what's my chance?"

"I don't know," said his sister, slowly.

"Then I must ask herself, and I shall do so to-day."

"I don't know," repeated Mrs. Ashe. "'She is a woman, therefore to be
won:' and I don't think there is any one ahead of you; that is the best
hope I have to offer, Ned. Katy never talks of such things; and though
she's so frank, I can't guess whether or not she ever thinks about them.
She likes you, however, I am sure of that. But, Ned, it will not be wise
to say anything to her yet."

"Not say anything? Why not?"

"No. Recollect that it is only a little while since she looked upon you
as the admirer of another girl, and a girl she doesn't like very much,
though they are cousins. You must give her time to get over that
impression. Wait awhile; that's my advice, Ned."

"I'll wait any time if only she will say yes in the end. But it's hard
to go away without a word of hope, and it's more like a man to speak
out, it seems to me."

"It's too soon," persisted his sister. "You don't want her to think
you a fickle fellow, falling in love with a fresh girl every time you
go into port, and falling out again when the ship sails. Sailors have
a bad reputation for that sort of thing. No woman cares to win a man
like that."

"Great Scott! I should think not! Do you mean to say that is the way my
conduct appears to her, Polly ?"

"No, I don't mean just that; but wait, dear Ned, I am sure it is
better."

Fortified by this sage counsel, Lieutenant Worthington went away next
morning, without saying anything to Katy in words, though perhaps eyes
and tones may have been less discreet. He made them promise that some
one should send a letter every day about Amy; and as Mrs. Ashe
frequently devolved the writing of these bulletins upon Katy, and the
replies came in the shape of long letters, she found herself conducting
a pretty regular correspondence without quite intending it. Ned
Worthington wrote particularly nice letters. He had the knack, more
often found in women than men, of giving a picture with a few graphic
touches, and indicating what was droll or what was characteristic with
a single happy phrase. His letters grew to be one of Katy's pleasures;
and sometimes, as Mrs. Ashe watched the color deepen in her cheeks
while she read, her heart would bound hopefully within her. But she was
a wise woman in her way, and she wanted Katy for a sister very much; so
she never said a word or looked a look to startle or surprise her, but
left the thing to work itself out, which is the best course always in
love affairs.

Little Amy's improvement at Albano was something remarkable. Mrs. Swift
watched over her like a lynx. Her vigilance never relaxed. Amy was made
to eat and sleep and walk and rest with the regularity of a machine; and
this exact system, combined with the good air, worked like a charm. The
little one gained hour by hour. They could absolutely see her growing
fat, her mother declared. Fevers, when they do not kill, operate
sometimes as spring bonfires do in gardens, burning up all the refuse
and leaving the soil free for the growth of fairer things; and Amy
promised in time to be only the better and stronger for her hard
experience.

She had gained so much before the time came to start for Florence, that
they scarcely dreaded the journey; but it proved worse than their
expectations. They had not been able to secure a carriage to themselves,
and were obliged to share their compartment with two English ladies, and
three Roman Catholic priests, one old, the others young. The older
priest seemed to be a person of some consequence; for quite a number of
people came to see him off, and knelt for his blessing devoutly as the
train moved away. The younger ones Katy guessed to be seminary students
under his charge. Her chief amusement through the long dusty journey was
in watching the terrible time that one of these young men was having
with his own hat. It was a large three-cornered black affair, with sharp
angles and excessively stiff; and a perpetual struggle seemed to be
going on between it and its owner, who was evidently unhappy when it was
on his head and still more unhappy when it was anywhere else. If he
perched it on his knees it was sure to slide away from him and fall with
a thump on the floor, whereupon he would pick it up, blushing furiously
as he did so. Then he would lay it on the seat when the train stopped at
a station, and jump out with an air of relief; but he invariably forgot,
and sat down upon it when he returned, and sprang up with a look of
horror at the loud crackle it made; after which he would tuck it into
the baggage-rack overhead, from which it would presently descend,
generally into the lap of one of the staid English ladies, who would
hand it back to him with an air of deep offence, remarking to her
companion,--

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