Chapter XX: Gretta at Home

“Darling Gretta,” wrote Margot, “we miss you most frightfully in the dormer. Give uncle my love, and tell him to get well so that you can come back before the end of the term. Mother told me before she sailed about afterwards, and how you’re not coming back next term, I mean; and Josy and I think you were a brick to be so brave about staying at home, and letting Sybil come instead. Miss Read thinks so, too, for I asked her, and I expect Miss Slater does as well; anyhow, Monsieur Villon was nearly crazy, Rhoda says, when she went to her violin lesson; he had just heard about your having gone, and was muttering all kinds of French words that she couldn’t understand.

“Sybil’s getting on with her strokes awfully well. Helen is frightfully pleased. Josy and I get her to practise with us, and yesterday Helen came and watched, and Sybil made some fearfully neat shots. Helen said she shouldn’t wonder if she--Sybil, I mean--made a good centre-forward some day. That’s frightfully bucking, isn’t it? Tell uncle; he’ll be pleased. Sybil talks of nothing but hockey, and she’s as keen as keen can be; Josy and I’ll be awfully bucked if she’s ever captain.

“We’re all talking more than ever about the Hope-Scott Shield--specially in the dormer, and we wish you were there. We haven’t done much yet, though. Stella dashed out into the road to save a dog from being run over when we were out in the crocodile yesterday, but it didn’t come off--the bravery, I mean--because the dog had never meant to be run over, and Stella nearly was, herself; and the horse shied, and Miss Read was quite angry, and we don’t think she even _thought_ it was brave. In fact, she said it was silly. We’re so near the end of the term, only two weeks to-morrow, that someone’ll have to do something soon, so perhaps a chance will come. I wish you were here to try for it. We’re always talking about you in the dormer, and we’re taking jolly good care of Sybil....”

Gretta folded up the letter, which was becoming very frail with much reading, and looked up at the clock to see whether it was time for the doctor to take his next dose of medicine. A month had gone by since the day of Mrs. Fleming’s departure, and more than a month since Gretta’s return to take up the reins of her father’s house again. The month seemed like a year, the girl said to herself, but somehow or other not an unhappy year.

For Gretta, at home, had been quite as busy in another way as at the Cliff School, and in nursing and housekeeping time had been spent that might otherwise have passed in longing for all the joys of the term; also, she could not help knowing that her home-coming had been of the utmost service to her father. His illness had been much more severe, and had lasted much longer, than anyone had at first expected; even now, after a month of invalidism, the doctor, much against his will, was still unable to leave his bed, and the worries that the enforced rest brought in its train were difficult for the patient to bear.

Gretta understood a little of this, and, though she sighed as she replaced Margot’s letter in its envelope, she took care to put on a cheerful expression of countenance before mounting the stairs to the patient’s room, medicine-glass in hand.

But this afternoon the doctor was in a particularly gloomy mood, as Gretta found when she entered his room; he spoke in a fretful and weak voice from his bed--the nurse was evidently to blame in some way. “Gretta, you should learn to bring that medicine in _time_. Will you never be punctual?”

“The clock struck three, dad, as I came up the stairs,” replied the nurse.

“Then the clock is wrong; it can’t have been set properly since I’ve been upstairs.” The doctor relapsed once more into a state of gloom; any disturbing trifle would plunge him into depression, nowadays, and Gretta tried to devise a means of comfort.

“Shall I stay with you a little, dad? I could sew, or something, up here, and talk to you.” The girl had spent many afternoons by her father’s bedside, recounting tales of life as spent at the Cliff School; of hockey matches, of dormitory feasts, and daring escapades. He already knew about Long Jake; and the wonders of the “Little House” had been explained; the story of Margot’s adventure with the pony had been narrated, too; and so had the tale of the girls’ various efforts to win the Hope-Scott Shield. There was no little detail that Gretta had not recounted for the benefit of the invalid, and she now turned over in her mind whether there was any incident that might serve its turn again.

But the doctor was not to be interested so easily this afternoon. “I need change,” he declared irritably. “Unless I can get some definite change I don’t see _when_ I shall be about again.” He puckered up his brow in a way that his nurse could not bear to see.

“Dr. Moore said he’d come in this evening,” she remarked comfortingly; “he’ll be sure to sit up here and smoke, and he’ll be company for you.”

“_Moore!_” exclaimed the pessimistic patient. “He’s got _my_ work to do as well as his own. _He’ll_ be the next to break down.”

Gretta was in despair, and, welcoming any diversion from the subject ever uppermost in the doctor’s mind, exclaimed with surprise as the tinkle of the front-door bell was heard from below.

“I wonder who that is?” she remarked when Ann’s steps were heard mounting the stairs.

“Probably a bill,” declared the doctor, in disconsolate tones. “I don’t know _how_----”

Tap, tap, came at the bedroom door, and the maid’s voice was heard outside. “Miss Gretta, you’re wanted.”

“I won’t be a second, dad,” said the nurse; she ran into the passage, in her eagerness nearly falling over Ann.

“Whatever is it?” she whispered.

“Such a nice gentleman! As tall as tall! And _that_ broad! And he’s asking for _you_, miss!”

“But who _is_ he?” inquired Gretta in dismay.

“He’s a Mr. Courtney--so he _said_. And he said, too, ‘Ask Miss Margaret Grey if I can speak to her for a minute; she’ll p’rhaps have heard my name from Mrs. Fleming!’”

“It’s Long Jake!” cried Gretta in amazement, her cheeks turned pink, and she rushed downstairs, shyness forgotten; while mystification as to why the visitor had come was swallowed up in a feeling of excitement and delight that at last she was to see her school hero face to face!

An hour later it was a very energetic Gretta who was putting finishing touches to a dainty tea-tray set for two, and destined for the sick-room. Upstairs, from the said room, came the sound of cheerful voices--the doctor was evidently enjoying the company of his visitor. Gretta’s face dimpled with smiles as his laugh rang out in appreciation of some story. “Margot _said_ Long Jake always came in the nick of time,” she thought to herself; “and it’s true--he _does_!”

For Mr. Courtney, in explaining to the girl the reason of his unexpected appearance, had told her of Mrs. Fleming’s suggestion that he would probably be welcome at the doctor’s house if he could make time to drop in there. “Of course, I’ll go straight away,” he explained to Gretta, as she came into the drawing-room to greet him, “if you think that your father’s not well enough for visitors; but I’m going back to Australia in a few weeks’ time, you know, as I’ve nothing to keep me in England any longer; and, if I could be of any use meanwhile----”

“I believe you’re just the very person!” Gretta said, as emphatically as her shyness of the stranger--who was not really a stranger at all--would allow. “Dad _does_ need cheering up so badly, and you see he knows all about you. The ‘Little House,’ and the----” She stopped, thinking that perhaps she had said too much.

The visitor looked rather embarrassed. “Well, that’s over now,” he said quietly, after a minute. “The poor old chap who lived there has nothing more to worry about any longer.” Then, with a sudden and boyish change of tone, “Look here, Miss Gretta, suppose you ask your father if he’d like to see me?”

In five minutes he had been in the doctor’s room, and that was an hour ago, now; the girl felt as though her nursing duties were halved, to say the least of it, as she carried the tea-tray up the stairs, and knocked at the door of the sick-room.

“Here’s Gretta,” said the patient, in the voice of a rapidly recovering convalescent. “Why, Courtney, you’re a doctor yourself, man. I’ve not felt so glad to see a meal for a month or more.”