An Unwilling Guest by Grace Livingston Hill

Author:Grace Livingston Hill [Hill, Grace Livingston]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-03-26T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

Miss Rutherford Plays Nurse

The transforming of that stiff angular dreary hotel room into a homelike spot was not a difficult thing for Evelyn Rutherford to accomplish. She was a girl who generally achieved what she set about. The reason she did not often do nice things was that she did not rouse herself from her own pleasure or ease to take the trouble. Now, however, it pleased her whim to leave no stone unturned to make this first attempt at goodness a success. Perhaps the very energy she put into this and the strange vagaries into which her fancy led her were only the ways in which she eased the pains of a newly aroused conscience which she knew not how to soothe to sleep again, or at least she had at hand none of her other means of doing so.

It is not difficult to do nice things with plenty of money and taste at command. She had known at a glance what was needed, and sent a messenger boy out to one of the great stores nearby with a written order for a few articles to be delivered on approval. After the boy had started down the hall a new thought came to her and she recalled him and added an order for a few plainly framed good pictures, within a certain price, to be sent, from which she could make a selection. Perhaps it was these as much as anything else which gave the "at home" air to the room when Richard Rutherford awoke, though he did not at first notice them. His sister had selected them by fancy rather than knowledge, for she was not an art student and did not judge pictures by their worth, only by the way they spoke to her. She had chosen from the lot sent over to her some horses' heads and dogs by Rosa Bonheur, a pretty etching, and Hoffman's child head of Christ. It was a curious collection. She knew that her brother was fond of horses and dogs. The Hoffman she had seen at the Greys' and been struck by the wonderful expression of the face, and a fancied likeness in the eyes of Doctor Grey. That it was supposed to represent the boy Christ Jesus, strange to say, she did not know until after she had bought it. She had this hung on the wall opposite the foot of the bed, and when her brother began to notice the pictures this was the first one his eyes rested upon.

He lay quietly looking about him for a moment when he first awoke. There was a restful, homelike quiet pervading the room. His sister had her head turned away from him and seemed to be thinking. The nurse was nowhere to be seen. The door opened softly and the doctor stepped in. The patient looked up with a smile.

"Why, you look more cheerful today, and what's happened to the place? It bears the touches of a woman's hand."

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