PEACE, THE GOOD SAMARITAN

Down the sloping hillside browned with the summer sun strolled Peace one afternoon late in August, gathering the purple foxgloves which waved invitingly in the breeze. It was one of those rare days of waning summer, clear, beautiful and cool, with just a hint of autumn haze in the air; and it cast its magic spell over the bare-headed, flower-laden maid, wandering dreamily through the crisp, crackling grass, with no particular destination in view, no particular thought in mind. She had set out an hour before with Cherry and Allee as her companions, but had wandered away from them without being aware of it, and was now some distance from home, still busy pulling the gorgeous stems of bloom, still unconscious of her loneness, still lost in her own realms of fancy.

This Peace was one few people knew. Allee was most familiar with the brown-eyed dream-child, the little family at the parsonage were quite well acquainted with her, and occasionally Gail caught a fleeting glimpse of that hidden spirit, but to the rest of the little world in which she lived she was a bright-eyed, gay-hearted little romp, whose efforts to lend assistance to others were always leading her into mischief, oftentimes with unhappy results.

So it is no wonder that busy Dr. Bainbridge was surprised when he discovered her in this strange mood as he came puffing and panting up the hill toward town, for she was so completely lost amid her dreams that she did not see him nor hear his brusque greeting until he stepped directly in her path and clutched her arm. Then she started as if suddenly awakened from a sleep, and exclaimed, “Why, Dr. Bainbridge, what do you mean by making me jump so? I nearly lost my skin! I never saw you at all. Where did you come from the clouds?”

“No, miss. If I had been there you would have seen me before this, for if ever anyone was walking in the clouds, it was you just this minute. Come along, I want you, dreamer. Can you do me a favor, a big one?”

“’Pends upon what it is,” answered Peace, thoroughly awake now.

He laughed at the judicious tone of voice and the familiar cant of the curly brown head, and answered promptly, “I want you to play Good Samaritan for a little while, be nurse for one of my patients ”

“Nurse?” She looked at him with wide-open eyes, secretly wondering whether he knew what he was talking about.

“Yes, ma’am, nurse!” he thundered. “Annette Fisher is sick, very sick, and I have told her mother time after time that she must not be left alone, yet in spite of all my cautions, that red-headed ignoramus has taken the rest of the caboodle and gone off to town, leaving Annette all alone in the house until the father gets home tonight. The child’s fever has been soaring sky-high for days, and I was just beginning to think I had it in control and could pull her through when that old termagant-gossip of a mother, who doesn’t deserve to have chick or child, hikes off to spend the afternoon with relatives in the city for a chance to look up bargains at The Martindale. What are embroideries and dress goods compared with the life of a child? Won’t she get a piece of my mind the next time I lay eyes on her?” So angry and indignant was the old doctor that he had wholly forgotten himself, and spoke as he would never have thought of doing under different circumstances.

Peace brought him to the earth by agreeing heartily, “Well, I would ’f I was you, and I’d give her a good big piece, too. I’ll nurse Annette if you want me to. Shall I give her a bath and dose her with medicine every few minutes, like we did mother? Does she need to be wrapped up in wet rags or painted with irondye? Or do you want me to feed her grool and broth?”

“You don’t have to do a single thing but stay with her and keep her from fretting until I can get someone from the village to go down there. I gave her a bath just now myself, and she has taken her medicine all I want her to have for the present. She isn’t to eat a thing, but she can drink all the milk she wants, and occasionally have a little water if she asks for it. Now remember, Peace. She is too sick to pay attention to much of anything, but sometimes she is fretful and talks a good deal. Try to be as quiet as possible yourself, don’t say things to excite her don’t speak at all unless she wants you to. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll send someone down to relieve you the minute I can get anyone. Hurry along now, and don’t forget what I have said.”

“All right,” was the cheery response; and Peace, with a curious thrill of awe in her heart, sped down the hill as fast as her nimble feet could carry her.

The door of the Fisher house stood open, so, without knocking to make her presence known, she stepped softly inside the hall, and crept up the stairs to the little, hot chamber, where thin-faced Annette lay burning with fever. The invalid was awake, tossing fretfully among her pillows, but the instant she saw Peace in the doorway her eyes brightened, and she called in a shrill, weak voice, “Is it really you, Peace, or has my head turned ’round again?”

“It’s really me. Dr. Bainbridge sent me up.”

“That’s funny. He wouldn’t let you or any of the other girls come when I asked for you before. Did you bring all those flowers for me?”

“Yes,” Peace answered readily, glancing down at the huge bouquet in her arms, which she had entirely forgotten. “Where shall I put them? No, don’t try to tell me; I’ll find a dish myself.”

“Would you please bring me a drink, too?” Annette asked hesitatingly.

“Sure!”

“Fresh from the well?”

“Yes.”

Peace disappeared down the creaking stairs again, returning quickly with a dripping dipper full of sparkling, ice-cold water from the well, and the sick child drank feverishly, sighing as she relinquished the cup, “That’s awful good. If only it would stay cold all the time! But the next time I want a drink it is warm and horrid, and ma says she can’t be always chasing to the well just to get me some water. Harry won’t, either. Pa ain’t here but a little while night and morning, and Isabel is too little to fetch it. Set the flowers here on the chair where I can see them good. When ma comes home she’ll likely throw them out. She says she can’t see the good of cluttering up the house with dishes of weeds like that.”

“Your mother is an old turnacrank, Doctor says so,” muttered Peace indignantly, as she tugged at the heavy jar of foxgloves she had arranged with artistic care.

“What did you say?” asked Annette, querulously.

Peace suddenly remembered the doctor’s instructions. “I say I know how to keep water cold. Gail used to do it for mother on hot days. I’ll wet a rag and wrap the dipper in that and set it in the window where the wind will blow on it.”

“Will that make it keep cool?”

“Yes, as long as the rag is wet. There is quite a little wind today, too, and that helps.”

“Is it cool out-doors?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, dear! I wish I could go out under the trees. It is so hot in here cooped up like I am.”

Peace bit her tongue. How easy it was to forget the doctor’s directions! Twice already she had said things which excited the poor, sick prisoner, whom she had been told to keep quiet. A happy inspiration leaped into her thought, and moving the jar of delicate blossoms closer to the bed, she slipped a spray into Annette’s hand, saying, “S’pose we minagine these flowers are trees. They would make a lovely forest, wouldn’t they? I often wish the trees had pretty flowers.”

“Apple trees have,” said Annette thoughtfully.

“That’s so!” was the surprised ejaculation. “I forgot all about the fruit trees. All of them have flowers, but I like the apple-blossoms best, don’t you?”

“Yes, they are so cool looking and so sweet and smelly.”

“That’s what I like about them most. When I go to the moon I wear a dress made of apple-blossoms and ”

“When you go to the moon?” repeated Annette, looking bewildered and wondering if the queer thoughts which the doctor called delirium were coming back to haunt her again.

“Oh, of course, I really don’t go, but I like to s’pose what it would be like if I could go there. After Allee and me go to bed at night, sometimes the moon comes and shines in at our window and we talk to it. I don’t care about the man-in-the-moon very much, though Allee likes him. She says he must be so lonely up there by himself all the time that she doesn’t see how he can keep on smiling so. But I love the lady in the moon.”

“The lady in the moon?”

“Well, we call her the moon lady. We like to think she is a beautiful, beau-ti-ful lady, with long, pale yellow hair that pretty nearly drags when she walks. It would drag if she didn’t wear such big tails on her skirts. That’s the kind of hair I wish I had instead of kinky, woolly curls. Hers isn’t a bit curly, but just falls back from her face like Jennie Munn’s after she has had it braided for a long time. And it trails out behind her like a a cloud. Her dress is white stuff, and she never has it starched; it’s just soft and shiny and swishy, and seems to b’long just to her. Oh, she is the prettiest lady, Annette!”

“What color are her eyes?” asked the invalid, much interested in the picture Peace was drawing.

“Blue, just like Hope’s, only you don’t think of them being blue when you look at the moon lady they ’mind you of stars. I think they are stars, and she wears a star in her hair.”

“Does she have a house to live in?”

“Not a house, but a palace, made of soft-looking, sparkly stones that flash like diamond dust, and inside it is white and still, the kind of a still that makes you feel dreamy and nice. And there are fountains everywhere, with cool water splashing out of the top of them. They are made of white marble the fountains are, I mean and so are the pillows of the palace on the outside, where the moon lady walks in her garden.”

“Is there a garden in the moon?”

“In my moon there is, and ”

“Ma says the moon is made of green cheese, and is full of maggots.”

“I heard that story, too, and I look for them first thing every time I go there, but I haven’t found any yet. Big, white Easter lilies grow along the paths, and lilies-of-the-valley blossom the whole year round, and water lilies make the lake almost white sometimes.”

“Oh, a lake, too! How nice!”

“The moon lady’s lake is the prettiest I ever saw. The water is always silv’ry, just like our lakes look when the moon shines down on them. You know, Annette, don’t you?”

“Yes, the moon was shining one time when I went to Lake Marion with pa to hear the band, and we rowed around in a little boat and listened to the music.”

“That’s just what the moon lady does when we go to see her, only her boats are green-pea pods, and the sails are apple-blossom petals. We don’t have to row; the boats just float of themselves, and we pick water lilies or listen to the music ”

“What kind of music?”

“Oh, sometimes the moon lady sings by-low songs, and sometimes it’s just the frogs singing in the bottom of the lake.”

“Oh, do you like frogs’ croaking?”

“If I have been good I like it awfully well, but if I’ve made Gail or anyone sorry, I don’t want to listen to the frogs, for they keep saying, ‘Don’t do it again, don’t do it again,’ till it makes me mis’rable. The frogs in the moon never say such things, though, and I like to listen to them. Sometimes we call across the water to hear the echoes answer; and sometimes we let the moonbeams light on our hands and hair and dresses, and talk to them.”

“Talk to the moonbeams? How funny!”

“Why, our moonbeams are lovely little fairies, with wings like dragon-flies, and shiny, silv’ry gowns; and whenever they get tired of flying about they settle down and glow like fireflies. They b’long to the moon lady and are nice fairies. They make sugar stars and moon-ice for us to eat.”

Peace clapped her hand abruptly over her mouth. Suppose Annette should ask for something to eat! But the sick child merely held the spray of foxgloves nearer her face and inquired, “What is that? Ice-cream?”

“No; it’s shaped like icicles and has kind of a sourish taste, either lemon or strawberry, and it doesn’t melt until you get tired of it. Then it’s all gone. And it’s the same way with moonbeamade. Allee made up that name from lemonade. It is just a heap of foam that tastes like the north-west wind and is cool and nice.”

“S’posing things is a queer game, ain’t it?” murmured Annette, drowsily.

“It’s lots of fun, and sometimes when we go to sleep we dream about them, the places we visit in the moon and the ”

“The water and lilies and fountains and cool things?”

“Yes, or the mountains, where the fairies and goblins live, or the forests, which belong to the brownies and elves, or the valleys, where the sunbeams play, or the caves, where the wind-voices hide, or I do b’lieve she’s asleep. Yes, sir! Both eyes are tight shut, and she has dropped the foxglove she was holding so hard.”

Softly Peace dropped back into her former position upon the floor, hardly daring to breathe for fear of waking the little slumberer, for had not the doctor said she was a very sick child, and that she must be kept as quiet as possible?

At thought of the doctor she began to wonder why he had not sent the woman from the village as he had promised to do. Already the sun was sinking low in the west, and no one had come to watch over the invalid. Perhaps he had forgotten, perhaps someone was dreadfully sick and he had been called away before he could find a nurse for Annette. Perhaps the brown head nodded gently, the long, dark lashes fluttered slowly over the somber brown eyes, and Peace, too, was fast asleep, curled up against the narrow bed, where the sick child lay in a dreamless, refreshing slumber. The sunset faded from the sky, twilight deepened into dusk, and the stars came out in their pale glory, but both the Good Samaritan and her patient were unconscious of it all.

In the little brown house among the maple trees great anxiety brooded. Peace had not come home with her sisters from their flower-gathering expedition, and no one in town had seen her. The whole neighborhood was aroused, and a search party was just being organized when the doctor’s carriage drove up to the gate, and the physician, angry, dismayed and alarmed, hurried up the path as fast as his avoirdupois would permit, flung open the screen and called imperiously, “Miss Gail, girls, any of you! It’s all my fault! Peace is down at the Fisher house watching over Annette. I sent her there this afternoon while I went after a woman to stay with the child, and have just this minute heard that Grandma Cole sprained her ankle on the way there and had to crawl back home again. Mrs. Fisher, the big idiot, is moseying up the road now, well satisfied with her bargains. I passed her and her tribe a piece back and stopped long enough to tell her what I thought of her. Now pile in and I’ll take you back with me for that little sister of yours.”

He had caught up a little shawl from the hat-rack as he talked, and throwing this over Gail’s shoulders, he bundled her out of the house and into his buggy before she had recovered from her astonishment at his outburst; and after a moment of furious riding behind the lively bay horse, she found herself stumbling up the dark stairs in the unlighted Fisher house, at the heels of the panting, puffing, wrathy doctor. From somewhere he produced a lamp, and soon the dim rays of light dispelled the gloom of the place, and she stood beside him, looking down into the pale face of Annette asleep among her pillows, and the rosy one of smiling Peace, huddled in an uncomfortable bunch on the floor.

“What a picture!” murmured the doctor huskily, leaning over to touch the damp forehead and feel the pulse of his little patient. “This is the first natural sleep she has had for days. Bully for Peace! I confess I was worried about leaving her here in the first place. I was afraid she would fret Annette into a worse fever than she already had. I’d have gone crazy if I’d had any notion that the child must stay here all the afternoon, with only Peace to look after her. Excuse me if I seem more concerned about Annette’s welfare than over Peace’s long absence and your fright, Gail. I’ve had a big battle to pull her through, and I was wild when I found that fool mother had gone off and left her alone. Didn’t expect to be gone long, and here it is hours! There, I won’t storm any more, but we’ll wake Peace up and take her home.”

He shook the child gently by the shoulder, and as the sleepy eyes fluttered open they saw only Gail bending over her. “It’s all right, Gail,” the child said softly, still remembering her charge. “Dr. Bainbridge asked me to be a good sanatarium over Annette while that negrogrampus of a mother was hunting bargains of embroid’ries and he was hunting a sure-enough nurse. Oh, there is the doctor himself! Is Annette all right? She talked a lot at first, but I told her about my moon lady, and pretty soon she went fast asleep.”

“Annette is doing splendidly, Dr. Peace, and I am tickled to death at the good work you’ve done. Run along with Gail now. I’ll be down in a minute to drive you home.”