Martin, the little nurse, and Mandy, it had come to
be known in the Haley household and in the country side that the
hired man was a "great swell in the old country," and Haley's sturdy
independence shrank from anything that savoured of "suckin' round a
swell," as he graphically put it. But Mandy scouted this idea and waited
for the coming of the expected guest with no embarrassment from the
knowledge that he had been in the old country "a great swell."
Hence when, through a crack beside the window blind, she saw him, a
poor, pale shadow, descending wearily and painfully from the buggy,
the great mother heart in the girl welled with pity. She could hardly
forbear rushing out to carry him bodily in her strong arms to the spare
room and lay him where she had once helped to lay him the night of the
tragedy some eight weeks before. But in this matter she had learned her
lesson. She remembered the little nurse and her indignant scorn of the
lack of self-control she had shown on the occasion of her last visit to
the hospital. So, instead of rushing forth, she clutched the curtains
and forced herself to stand still, whispering to herself the while, "Oh,
he will die sure! He will die sure!" But when she looked upon him seated
comfortably in the kitchen with a steaming glass of ginger and whiskey,
her mother's unfailing remedy for "anything wrong with the insides," she
knew he would not die and her joy overflowed in boisterous welcome.
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