“MY land alive!”

That was what Mrs. Erskine said, when Ruth told her the news. You may have observed that those three words constituted a favorite expression of hers—one which she was apt to use on all occasions, greatly to her stepdaughter’s discomfiture. She winced under it now, it seemed so ridiculously inappropriate to the disaster that had come into their midst. While she was trying to impress the situation on the mother and Susan, Dr. Bacon returned. He came directly into the library, as one who had laid aside all the ceremonies of private life, and adopted the business style. He hurried into the midst of the difficulties, being one who, while capable of feeling the most intense and practical sympathy for others, had never learned the art of expressing it other than by actions.

“Miss Ruth, I am afraid it is going to be almost impossible to get a proper nurse for your father. There is a good deal of this abominable disease in the city, now, and the nurses are taxed to the utmost. Ordinary nurses, you know, will not come, and would not do, anyway. So we shall have to manage as well as we can, for a little, until I can look around me and get somebody.”

Then Mrs. Erskine came to the front.

“What are you talking about—nurses? Who wants one of ’em? miserable, half-awake creatures; not but what I’ve seen some good ones in my day, but I could beat any of ’em, when it come to a real up-and-down case of sickness; and I can nurse my own husband, you’ll find, better than the best of ’em. I brought him back from death’s door once, and I will try hard to do it again. A nurse is the last kind of a creature that I want to help me.”

“But, Mrs. Erskine, I ought not to conceal from you that this is going to be a very decided case of small-pox. The chances of infection, to one who nurses him, will be very great.”

“I can’t help that, you know,” she said, determinedly; “I’ve got to be with him, of course. Who would, if his wife wasn’t? I don’t believe I’ll take it. I never was one of them kind that always took things. I have the sick-headache, and that’s every blessed thing I do have, except a touch of the rheumatism, now and then; but I never did have a bit of headache, nor nothing, when there was any real sickness on my hands. All the time Susan had the fever I sot up nights, or stood up—a good deal of the time she was that sick that I didn’t set down; I jest kept on the trot all night, doing one thing and another. But, all the while, I never had an ache nor a pain about me; and, if I do take it, I might as well as the next one. I ain’t a mite afraid of it; not that I’d run into it any quicker than you would, but, when it runs into your own house, and gets hold of your own flesh and blood, or your husband—which is the next thing to that—why, then, I’m one of them kind that has to be on hand. There’s no use talkin’—I’m a going to nurse him, and all the doctor’s in the city can’t stop me.”

“I assure you, Mrs. Erskine, I haven’t the least desire to do so. On the contrary, I appreciate your devotion.”

The doctor’s tone was earnest—his manner respectful. Mrs. Judge Erskine had evidently risen several degrees in his esteem. She was not a piece of putty, to be gotten out of the way in the least troublesome manner; but a live and very energetic factor in this business. A woman who not only was not afraid of small-pox, but could calmly insist on her right to attend a very bad case of it, was deserving of all respect from him; and he did not, in the least, care how many grammatical errors she made in expressing her determination. In less time than it takes me to tell you of it, the question of attendant on the sick man was settled, and Mrs. Erskine installed as nurse by the relieved doctor, to the satisfaction of all but Ruth. She thought, in dismay, of the misery which her father would be called to endure. How was he, sick and nervous—and she knew he could be fearfully nervous, when only a little ill—to bear the strain of that woman’s tongue, when, in health, it was more than he could endure? What would he say to the plan? Would he feel that she might have shielded him from it? Yet how could she help it? and, indeed, what else could be done? She had been very nervous over his being left alone. It had seemed to her that she must disregard his positive command and go to him; and it had been such a source of relief and comfort when Judge Burnham announced his intention of going, that she felt she could never forget it. Certainly it would not do to leave him without an attendant. Yet she could not be grateful to the wife for proposing it.

“He can never endure it!” she murmured; and she looked her distress so completely that the doctor was moved to soothe her, when he came back from installing Mrs. Erskine, and giving her directions.

“It will do for a few days, my dear girl; or, at least, for a few hours, until we can look about us, and secure professional assistance. There is not the slightest danger of her taking the disease now, you know; indeed, you might be with him yourself, only he is so nervous about you that he will not listen to reason. But she will take good care of him. I really think she understands how to do it.”

Ruth made no reply; she could not. She wanted to ask what her father said, and whether he was likely to bear up under such an added weight of misery as this last. But, reflecting that it would not do to say anything of the kind, she took refuge in silence. And the work of rearranging this disorganized and disordered household went on.

In an incredibly short space of time, considering all that had to be planned and arranged, the doctor had done his share of it, given explicit and peremptory directions as to what should, and what should not be done, and was gone. As for Judge Burnham, he had gone directly from the sick-room to Judge Erskine’s office, on a matter of business for the latter. So the two sisters were left alone in the library, to stare at each other, or out into the street, as they chose.

Susan Erskine had been a very silent looker-on at this morning’s confusion. Ruth could not tell what she thought. Beyond the first exclamation of surprise, she had expressed no dismay. A little touch of some feeling (what was it?) she had shown once, when her mother was planning, and announcing that she did not intend to take the disease, and, if she did, she might as well as anyone.

“Oh, mother!” Susan had said, in a low, distressed tone—a tone full of suppressed feeling of some sort—and her mother had turned on her sharply, with a—

“Well, child, what?”

“Nothing,” Susan said, as one who had checked her sentence and was holding herself silent. And thereafter she made no sign.

And so at last these two sisters were stranded in that deserted library. Ruth, on her part, gazing blankly out of the window, watching the hurrying passers-by with a curious sense of wonderment as to what they would think could they know what was transpiring inside. Suddenly she turned from the window with an exclamation of dismay—a thought, which until now had dropped into the background, returned to her.

“There isn’t a servant in the house!”

“Why, what has become of them?”

“They fled at the very first mention of the trouble. Never was anything accomplished more rapidly. I thought they had hardly time to reach their rooms when they disappeared around the corner.”

“Is it possible!” Susan said, after a moment’s silent contemplation. She was both surprised and disappointed. There was nothing in her nature that could respond to that method of bearing one another’s burdens, and she did not understand human nature well enough to expect developments in others which were foreign to her own.

“What shall we do about dinner?” Ruth asked, after another interval of silence.

“Why, get it,” Susan answered, lightly. She could not comprehend what an impossible thing this was in Ruth’s estimation.

“But I—why, I know nothing about it,” Ruth said, stammering and aghast.

“I do. There is nothing about a dinner that I do not understand, I believe—that is, a reasonable and respectable dinner. In fact, I know how to do several things that are unreasonable. I’ll go right down-stairs and take a view of the situation.”

“I will go with you,” Ruth said, heroically. “I don’t know anything about such matters, but I can at least show you through the house.”

Is it your fortune to know, by experience, just what a deserted look a kitchen can take on in a brief space of time, when the regular inhabitants thereof have made a sudden exit? Just let the fire in the range go down, with unswept ashes littering the hearth, and unwashed dishes filling the tables, and a general smell of departed cookery pervading the air, and you need no better picture of dismalness. Especially is this the case if you survey the scene as Ruth did, without being able to conceive how it was possible ever again to bring order out of this confusion.

“Why, dear me!” said Susan, “things look as though they had stirred them up to the best of their abilities before they left. Where is the hearth-brush kept, Ruth?”

“I am sure I don’t know,” Ruth said, and she looked helpless and bewildered.

“Well, then, I’ll look for it. We must have a fire the first thing. I wonder where the kindlings are?”

Then she began to open little doors and crannies, in a wise sort of way, Ruth looking on, not knowing that there were such places to search into. Both hearth-brush and kindlings were found, and Susan attacked the range, while Ruth took up a china cup and set it down again, moved a pile of plates to the side of the table and moved them back again, looking utterly dazed and useless.

“I wonder if this damper turns up or down?”

This from Susan, and her sister turned and surveyed the damper with a grave, puzzled air before she spoke.

“It is no sort of use to ask me. I never even examined the range. I know no more about the dampers than the people on the street do.”

“Never mind,” said Susan, “the smoke does. It puffs out with one arrangement, and goes up the chimney, as it should, with the other.”

“I don’t know how we are ever to do it,” Ruth said.

“What, make the fire? Why, it is made already! Don’t you hear it roar? This is a splendid range; I should think it would be fun to cook with it. Our stove was cracked, and one door-hinge was broken, and besides it wouldn’t bake on the bottom. The stove wouldn’t, you know—not the broken hinge.”

Susan rarely—indeed, I might say never—indulged in reminiscence, and therefore Ruth was touched.

“Why did you keep yourselves so poorly provided for?” she asked, a flush rising on her pale cheek. “I have heard your mother say that you were well supplied with money.”

“We were. It was one of my mother’s whims, if you choose to call it so. She was continually troubled with the feeling that some day she or I, or—more often, I think—father, might need all the money she could save; and I never combated the feeling, except when it intrenched too closely on her own needs. She seemed fairly haunted with the thought.”

“How absurd!” said Ruth, and her lip curled.

As for Susan, her lips opened, and then closed partly, and whatever she would have uttered remains in oblivion. She closed the damper energetically, and said:

“There, that is conquered! Now, what are we to have for dinner?”

“Why, I ordered roast lamb and its accompaniments,” Ruth said, recalling her minute directions given to the skillful cook (she knew how to order dinners,) “but, of course, that is out of the question.”

“Why, not at all, if you would like it. I know exactly how to roast lamb. But, then, who would eat it?”

“Why, Prof. Stevens and his friend are to dine with us. Oh, they must be sent word not to come! How can we send? Who is there to go?”

And Ruth, the complications of her situation pressing upon her in these minor details, looked utterly dismayed.

“Why, Judge Burnham will be our errand-boy—he said so. I met him as he came down-stairs, and he told me to say that he would call as soon as he had attended to father’s commission, and serve us in any way that we desired. We will have him first recall the invitation to our guests, and then we will send him to the ‘butcher’s, the baker’s, and the candlestick-maker’s.’ I shouldn’t be surprised if he proved a very useful member of society.”

Susan was bent on being cheerful. “Things are not so bad but they might have been worse,” she had said, almost as soon as she was told of the trouble.

“Mother says he might have been taken sick down town, and if they had known what the disease was they wouldn’t have allowed him to come home. Think of that! But about the roast lamb,” she said. “Do you think you and I could compass it, or shall we compel the errand-boy to stay and divide the work with us?”

Then these two girls did what was perhaps the wisest thing for them to do, under the circumstances. They laughed—a real laugh.

“Why not?” said Susan. “He is not very sick. The doctor said he didn’t think he would be, because he would be well taken care of at the very outset; and he will, you may be sure of that. Mother knows how, and her heart is in it. You may trust her, Ruth, in a time of sickness. And we shall manage nicely. This disconsolate kitchen shall take on new features presently. If I were you I would go right up-stairs and be ready to give Judge Burnham his orders when he comes. He is real good and kind. I like him. He will help us in every way. And when you come down again I will have things in train for a first-class dinner.”

A new anxiety occurred to Ruth.

“Do you know how to prepare food for sick people?” she asked.

“Indeed I do! The most appetizing little dishes that you can imagine. I’ve always thought I had a special talent in that direction. We will waylay the doctor the very next time he comes, and find out what he will allow, and then I’ll cook it; and you must arrange it daintily with silver, and china, and flowers, you know. They will let us have all sorts of nice things up there for a while, and I think that is the real secret of serving an invalid, having everything arranged tastefully and gracefully.”

Ruth turned toward her sister with a very tender smile on her face. She realized that there had been an effort to make her feel that she was in a position to do an important service for her father, and the thoughtfulness of the effort touched her.