“Don’t like blankets next to my face,” I elucidated, sleepily, “never can tell who slept under ‘em last—”
You cat!” exclaimed Norah, making a little rush at me. “If you weren’t supposed to be ill I’d shake you! Comparing my darling rosebud quilt to your miserable gray blankets! Just for that I’ll make you eat an extra pair of eggs.”
There never was a sister like Norah. But then, who ever heard of a brother-in-law like Max? No woman—not even a frazzled-out newspaper woman—could receive the love and care that they gave me, and fail to flourish under it. They had been Dad and Mother to me since the day when Norah had tucked me under her arm and carried me away from New York. Sis was an angel; a comforting, twentieth-century angel, with white apron strings for wings, and a tempting tray in her hands in place of the hymn books and palm leaves that the picture-book angels carry. She coaxed the inevitable eggs and beef into more tempting forms than Mrs. Rorer ever guessed at. She could disguise those two plain, nourishing articles of diet so effectually that neither hen nor cow would have suspected either of having once been part of her anatomy. Once I ate halfway through a melting, fluffy, peach-bedecked plate of something before I discovered that it was only another egg in disguise.
“Feel like eating a great big dinner to-day, Kidlet? “Norah would ask in the morning as she stood at my bedside (with a glass of egg-something in her hand, of course).
“Eat!”—horror and disgust shuddering through my voice—“Eat! Ugh! Don’t s-s-speak of it to me. And for pity’s sake tell Frieda to shut the kitchen door when you go down, will you? I can smell something like ugh!—like pot roast, with gravy!” And I would turn my face to the wall.
Three hours later I would hear Sis coming softly up the stairs, accompanied by a tinkling of china and glass. I would face her, all protest.
“Didn’t I tell you, Sis, that I couldn’t eat a mouthful? Not a mouthf—um-m-m-m! How perfectly scrumptious that looks! What’s that affair in the lettuce leaf? Oh, can’t I begin on that divine-looking pinky stuff in the tall glass? H’m? Oh, please!”
“I thought—” Norah would begin; and then she would snigger softly.
“Oh, well, that was hours ago,” I would explain, loftily. “Perhaps I could manage a bite or two now.”
Whereupon I would demolish everything except the china and doilies.
It was at this point on the road to recovery, just halfway between illness and health, that Norah and Max brought the great and unsmiling Von Gerhard on the scene. It appeared that even New York was respectfully aware of Von Gerhard, the nerve specialist, in spite of the fact that he lived in Milwaukee. The idea of bringing him up to look at me occurred to Max quite suddenly. I think it was on the evening that I burst into tears when Max entered the room wearing a squeaky shoe. The Weeping Walrus was a self-contained and tranquil creature compared to me at that time. The sight of a fly on the wall was enough to make me burst into a passion of sobs.
“I know the boy to steady those shaky nerves of yours, Dawn,” said Max, after I had made a shamefaced apology for my hysterical weeping, “I’m going to have Von Gerhard up here to look at you. He can run up Sunday, eh, Norah?”
“Who’s Von Gerhard?” I inquired, out of the depths of my ignorance. “Anyway, I won’t have him. I’ll bet he wears a Vandyke and spectacles.”
“Von Gerhard!” exclaimed Norah, indignantly. “You ought to be thankful to have him look at you, even if he wears goggles and a flowing beard. Why, even that red-haired New York doctor of yours cringed and looked impressed when I told him that Von Gerhard was a friend of my husband’s, and that they had been comrades at Heidelberg. I must have mentioned him dozens of times in my letters.”
“Never.”
“Queer,” commented Max, “he runs up here every now and then to spend a quiet Sunday with Norah and me and the Spalpeens. Says it rests him. The kids swarm all over him, and tear him limb from limb. It doesn’t look restful, but he says it’s great. I think he came here from Berlin just after you left for New York, Dawn. Milwaukee fits him as if it had been made for him.”
“But you’re not going to drag this wonderful being up here just for me!” I protested, aghast.
Max pointed an accusing finger at me from the doorway. “Aren’t you what the bromides call a bundle of nerves? And isn’t Von Gerhard’s specialty untying just those knots? I’ll write to him tonight.”
And he did. And Von Gerhard came. The Spalpeens watched for him, their noses flattened against the window-pane, for it was raining. As he came up the path they burst out of the door to meet him. From my bedroom window I saw him come prancing up the walk like a boy, with the two children clinging to his coat-tails, all three quite unmindful of the rain, and yelling like Comanches.
Ten minutes later he had donned his professional dignity, entered my room, and beheld me in all my limp and pea-green beauty. I noted approvingly that he had to stoop a bit as he entered the low doorway, and that the Vandyke of my prophecy was missing.
He took my hand in his own steady, reassuring clasp. Then he began to talk. Half an hour sped away while we discussed New York—books—music—theatres—everything and anything but Dawn O’Hara. I learned later that as we chatted he was getting his story, bit by bit, from every twitch of the eyelids, from every gesture of the hands that had grown too thin to wear the hateful ring; from every motion of the lips; from the color of my nails; from each convulsive muscle; from every shadow, and wrinkle and curve and line of my face.
Suddenly he asked: “Are you making the proper effort to get well? You try to conquer those jumping nerfs, yes?”
I glared at him. “Try! I do everything. I’d eat woolly worms if I thought they might benefit me. If ever a girl has minded her big sister and her doctor, that girl is I. I’ve eaten everything from pate de foie gras to raw beef, and I’ve drunk everything from blood to champagne.”
“Eggs? ” queried Von Gerhard, as though making a happy suggestion.
“Eggs!” I snorted. “Eggs! Thousands of ‘em! Eggs hard and soft boiled, poached and fried, scrambled and shirred, eggs in beer and egg-noggs, egg lemonades and egg orangeades, eggs in wine and eggs in milk, and eggs au naturel. I’ve lapped up iron-and-wine, and whole rivers of milk, and I’ve devoured rare porterhouse and roast beef day after day for weeks. So! Eggs!”
“Mein Himmel!” ejaculated he, fervently, “And you still live!” A suspicion of a smile dawned in his eyes. I wondered if he ever laughed. I would experiment.
“Don’t breathe it to a soul,” I whispered, tragically, “but eggs, and eggs alone, are turning my love for my sister into bitterest hate. She stalks me the whole day long, forcing egg mixtures down my unwilling throat. She bullies me. I daren’t put out my hand suddenly without knocking over liquid refreshment in some form, but certainly with an egg lurking in its depths. I am so expert that I can tell an egg orangeade from an egg lemonade at a distance of twenty yards, with my left hand tied behind me,and one eye shut, and my feet in a sack.”
“You can laugh, eh? Well, that iss good,” commented the grave and unsmiling one.
“Sure,” answered I, made more flippant by his solemnity. “Surely I can laugh. For what else was my father Irish? Dad used to say that a sense of humor was like a shillaly—an iligent thing to have around handy, especially when the joke’s on you.”
The ghost of a twinkle appeared again in the corners of the German blue eyes. Some fiend of rudeness seized me.
“Laugh!” I commanded.
Dr. Ernst von Gerhard stiffened. “Pardon?” inquired he, as one who is sure that he has misunderstood.
“Laugh!” I snapped again. “I’ll dare you to do it. I’ll double dare you! You dassen’t!”