When people learned, as they could hardly help doing from Mrs. Savor's
volubility, what his plan with regard to Idella had been, they instanced
that in proof of the injuriousness of his idealism as applied to real
life; and they held that she had been remanded in that strange way to Miss
Kilburn's charge for some purpose which she must not attempt to cross. As
the minister had been thwarted in another intent by death, it was a sign
that he was wrong in this too, and that she could do better by the child
than he had proposed.
This was the sum of popular opinion; and it was further the opinion of Mrs.
Gerrish, who gave more attention to the case than many others, that Annie
had first taken the child because she hoped to get Mr. Peck, when she found
she could not get Dr. Morrell; and that she would have been very glad to be
rid of it if she had known how, but that she would have to keep it now for
shame's sake.
For shame's sake certainly, Annie would have done several other things, and
chief of these would have been never to see Dr. Morrell again. She believed
that he not only knew the folly she had confessed to him, but that he had
divined the cowardice and meanness in which she had repented it, and she
felt intolerably disgraced before the thought of him. She had imagined
mainly because of him that escape to Rome which never has yet been
effected, though it might have been attempted if Idella had not wakened
ill from the sleep she sobbed herself into when she found herself safe in
Annie's crib again.
She had taken a heavy cold, and she moped lifelessly about during the day,
and drowsed early again in the troubled cough-broken slumber.
"That child ought to have the doctor," said Mrs. Bolton, with the grim
impartiality in which she masked her interference.
"Well," said Annie helplessly.
At the end of the lung fever which followed, "It was a narrow chance," said
the doctor one morning; "but now I needn't come any more unless you send
for me."
Annie stood at the door, where he spoke with his hand on the dash-board of
his buggy before getting into it.
She answered with one of those impulses that come from something deeper
than intention. "I will send for you, then--to tell you how generous you
are," and in the look with which she spoke she uttered the full meaning
that her words withheld.
He flushed for pleasure of conscious desert, but he had to laugh and turn
it off lightly. "I don't think I could come for that. But I'll look in to
see Idella unprofessionally."