legs, that Jack innocently asked if he should not be up in a week or
so.
“Well, no; it usually takes twenty-one days for bones to knit, and
young ones make quick work of it,” answered the doctor, with a
last scientific tuck to the various bandages, which made Jack feel
like a hapless chicken trussed for the spit.
“Twenty-one days! Three whole weeks in bed! I shouldn’t call that
quick work,” groaned the dismayed patient, whose experience of
illness had been limited.
“It is a forty days job, young man, and you must make up your
mind to bear it like a hero. We will do our best; but next time, look
before you leap, and save your bones. Good-night; you’ll feel
better in the morning. No jigs, remember”; and off went the busy
doctor for another look at Jill, who had been ordered to bed and
left to rest till the other case was attended to.
Anyone would have thought Jack’s plight much the worse, but the
doctor looked more sober over Jill’s hurt back than the boy’s
compound fractures; and the poor little girl had a very bad quarter
of an hour while he was trying to discover the extent 0f the injury,
“Keep her quiet, and time will show how much damage is done,”
was all he said in her hearing; but if she had known that he told
Mrs. Pecq he feared serious consequences, she would not have
wondered why her mother cried as she rubbed the numb limbs and
paced the pillows so tenderly.
Jill suffered most in her mind; for only a sharp stab of pain now
and then reminded her of her body; but her remorseful little soul
gave her no peace for thinking of Jack, whose bruises and
breakages her lively fancy painted in the darkest colors.
“Oh, don’t be good to me, Mammy; I made him go, and now he’s
hurt dreadfully, and may die; and it is all my fault, and everybody
ought to hate me,” sobbed poor Jill, as a neighbor left the room
after reporting in a minute manner how Jack screamed when his
leg was set, and how Frank was found white as a sheet, with his
head under the pump, while Gus restored the tone of his friend’s
nerves, by pumping as if the house was on fire.
“Whist, my lass, and go to sleep. Take a sup of the good wine Mrs.
Minot sent, for you are as cold as a clod, and it breaks my heart to
see my Janey so.”
“I can’t go to sleep; I don’t see how Jack’s mother could send my
anything when I’ve half killed him. I want to be cold and ache and
have horrid things done to me. Oh, if I ever get out of this bed I’ll
be the best girl in the world, to pay for this. See if I ain t!” and Jill
gave such a decided nod that her tears flew all about the pillow
like a shower.
“You d better begin at once, for you won’t get out of that bed for a
long while, I m afraid, my lamb,” sighed her mother, unable to
conceal the anxiety that lay so heavy on her heart.
“Am I hurt badly, Mammy?”
“I fear it, lass.”
“I’m glad of it; I ought to be worse than Jack, and I hope I am. I’ll
bear it well, and be good right away. Sing, Mammy, and I’ll try to
go to sleep to please you.”
Jill shut her eyes with sudden and unusual meekness, and before
her mother had crooned half a dozen verses of an old ballad, the
little black head lay still upon the pillow, and repentant Jill was
fast asleep with a red mitten in her hand.
Mrs. Pecq was an Englishwoman who had left Montreal at the
death of her husband, a French Canadian, and had come to live in
the tiny cottage which stood near Mrs. Minot’s big house,
separated only by an arbor-vitae hedge. A sad, silent person, who
had seen better days, but said nothing about them, and earned her
bread by sewing, nursing, work in the factory, or anything that