Then the car came back, and the ice bag was filled and put on Robin’s head, and the doctor settled down to watch the pulse and stay with the little one for a time.
“Go and lie down,” he told Jennifer. “I’ll call you if I need you.”
But Jennifer could not go far. She only went out and sat in the dim darkness on the top step of the stairs, with her head resting against the wall and her eyes closed. Her heart felt as if some great hand had gripped it.
She could hear Jerry downstairs talking to the young man, heard them presently go out to the kitchen, heard the little electric egg beater whirring softly, a bit of ice click, and then suddenly Jerry came with a frosted glass of milk and egg. The stranger must have mixed it, for Jerry didn’t know how, she was sure. She drank it gratefully and smiled.
“Did you have some?” she whispered. “You had no supper!”
“I’m all right!” he said staunchly. “I’ll get something pretty soon.”
But when he went down she saw the stranger there at the foot of the stairs with another glass and a plate with food on it, a sandwich perhaps. What a wonderful friend he had been! Tomorrow she must find a way to thank him.
She heard the two go out on the porch and settle down on one of the cots to talk in low murmurs, and then, leaning back her head against the wall in the cool darkness, she slumbered fitfully, for it must have been two hours afterward that she awoke suddenly to see the doctor looking down pityingly at her.
“You poor child!” he said compassionately. “I told you to go and lie down. Well, now I guess the worst of your troubles is over. The fever is going down decidedly and the little boy is resting well. You can lie down on the other bed beside him there and sleep till morning, I am quite sure. He has broken into perspiration, and I think the fever is conquered. I’m going to run back to my room for a little while, because I think Val ought to get some rest. He has to lead the early morning prayer service. But I’ll be back the first thing in the morning and bring something I want this little patient to have. Give him this medicine if he stirs or wakens, but don’t disturb him otherwise. Now, you won’t be afraid to rest, will you? Because I tell you it is perfectly safe to do so, and I never lie about such things. You may trust me!”
Jennifer looked up with a grateful smile.
“Oh, I’m so glad you came!” she said fervently.
“So am I,” said the doctor, smiling. “You had a pretty sick little boy here for a while, but I believe he will be much better in the morning.”
Then they were gone, and she heard Jerry come up and stand by Robin’s bed, looking down, touching the little hand gently, and then looking at her with a wan smile.
“He says he’s better,” Jerry whispered.
Jennifer nodded.
“You go in the other room and sleep, Jen. I’ll stay here.”
Jennifer shook her head. “No! He told me to lie down right here. He told me what to do and all about it. You go to sleep now, Jerry. We’ll need you tomorrow!”
So Jerry assented, but before he left he whispered, “I guess those prayers did some good, Jen!”
“Oh yes!” She smiled.
It was the doctor who woke them the next morning. How he managed to drive up to the cottage so silently Jerry couldn’t understand. But he did, without waking one of them. He just appeared among them, there on the porch where Jerry and Tryon were sound asleep on their cots.
“Everything all right above stairs?” he asked as gently as if he had been one of the family and knew what to count on.
Jerry rubbed his eyes and looked sheepish.
“I must have overslept,” he said.
“Not really!” laughed the doctor. “It’s just that you’re still underslept. But I had to get up early. Some kid at the conference last night ate too much ice cream for her own good and I had to get up and attend her, so I thought I’d just step over and see how you were making out. Heard any sounds?”
“Not a sound!” said Jerry. “I’ll step up and see!”
But Jennifer had heard them and appeared at the head of the stairs.
“He hasn’t stirred all night,” she said. “Or maybe I was too sleepy to know it.”
“I guess you’d have heard him if he had made much fuss,” the doctor said, smiling. “Let’s take a look.”
The doctor’s cool practiced fingers touched the little wrist, the brow; his head bent down, listening to the breathing and the heart.
“He’ll do!” said the doctor. “Now, if you’ll come out in the hall I’ll tell you what to do when he wakes up.”
That was a strange day, when they finally all got up and had breakfast. Jerry first, and then Tryon, raided the ice box. They took a glass of milk to Jennifer. The little girls were the last to wake up, and they got cornflakes and milk, and orange juice themselves.
Robin woke a little later and was fed carefully with food the doctor had ordered and superintended. They didn’t really all get together until late afternoon. The doctor had been in for the third time and gone away again, satisfied with his patient and promising to see him again before night. Then they gathered around a late and hastily scrambled together dinner, with gladness in their hushed voices because the doctor had said that Robin would get well. Robin was quietly and coolly asleep upstairs.
The young man hadn’t come back. The doctor hadn’t explained why beyond the fact that he had to lead a meeting that morning and then had to go away somewhere to lead another.
“His name is Val,” announced Jennifer. “I heard the doctor call him so last night.”
“No,” said Karen very decidedly, “his name is Jack. I heard the other man that led the singing call him Jack. He said, ‘Is it all right with you to take the early morning prayer-group, Jack?’ and he said ‘Yes.’ Now I guess I know.”
“Well, anyhow, the doctor called him Val,” said Jennifer.
“Well, I shall call him Jack,” said Karen. “He’s my friend, anyway. He said I looked like a little girl he used to know and like, and her name was Jennifer, too! He said so.”
“Aw, he was stringing you!” said Tryon, reaching over for another helping of fried potatoes.
It was a good dinner, if they had gotten it in a hurry. Jerry had broiled the steak, and Tryon had fried the potatoes. He had learned how at camp, and he did them well. Plenty of butter and pepper and salt, nice and brown and crispy on the edges. Hazel had cooked the peas. They were her specialty, and she loved them. The little girls had shelled them. Tryon had gone after blackberries and cream. He loved blackberries with plenty of cream and sugar.
“Well, I shall call him Jack,” insisted Karen. “I tell you, he’s my friend. He likes me. He said he did.”
“Well, the probability is that you won’t have any chance to call him anything,” laughed Jennifer. “He’s likely gone away to stay now, and we won’t see him again anywhere, but he certainly was nice to bring you home at that time of night. Some young men wouldn’t have bothered. They’d have taken you to the police or something.”
A shadow of fear passed over Karen’s face. She was still too near to her awful experience to treat it lightly.
They went to bed very early that night, and the next morning Robin was so much better that the doctor let them read him stories out of the picture books and cut soldiers out of paper for him to play with.
Somehow the whole terrifying experience had drawn the young family still closer together. They seemed to be glad just to be in one another’s presence and smile, and there wasn’t anything too hard or monotonous for any one of them to do for Robin. He was in a fair way to be utterly spoiled if he didn’t get well pretty soon.
It was a sad, lonely day when the doctor told them good-bye and went away. He said he had a big practice at home waiting for him. After he was gone they drooped a bit, and life in the little cottage grew tame indeed.
But there was one thing the children would never be tempted to do, and that was to climb the mountain. Not even in the daytime would they g
o off by themselves and climb up where Karen had gone, the night they were afraid someone had kidnapped her. But they loved the little cottage and did not tire of sitting around its porch reading some of its pleasant books, or picking flowers around the yard, playing “house” under the trees, or looking off toward the mountains. But the doctor was gone, and the young man who had brought him came no more, and they did not know where he had gone. Even Jerry, who had plenty of time to talk with him during that anxious night, hadn’t thought to ask his name or where he lived.
“Well, I’ll tell you,” said Jerry one night when they had been kidding him about it, “never mind, someday we’ll take a little trip in the car, when Robin is real well, and go around to that conference camp that Karen is always talking about and see him! I’d like to have that guy for a friend, I really would!”
But the days went by, and still they did not go.
“We’ve got to save gasoline, you know,” warned Jennifer. “We’ll have to travel on all too soon. Our month is almost up here, and Mrs. Foster will be coming back pretty soon.”
“Can’t we go back to the boat, Jen’fer?” asked Robin anxiously.
“I’m afraid not, boy, not just yet. I’m not ready to meet Peter Willis yet. But our exile is two-thirds over, and won’t it be wonderful when we can go home? Then we can go down to the boat as often as we like.”
“We’ll have to keep it nearer home if we go often,” said Tryon. “I can’t picture us going all that way! We couldn’t spare the time till another vacation, we’d miss so much school.”
“We’ll see about that,” said Jerry thoughtfully. “We’ll have some more good times some day on that boat, I’m telling you.”
“Maybe Peter Willis will get married to that girl with the painted lips,” said Heather. “Then he won’t want to come after Jennifer anymore, will he?”
They all had a good laugh at that, Jennifer with them, and Jerry looked relieved when he saw that Jennifer wasn’t troubled by their nonsense.
Then at last Mrs. Foster arrived, a whole day ahead of her schedule. She didn’t stay all night, and she didn’t drive them out, but they could see she wanted her house, so they hurriedly packed their belongings and started on the next morning.
“Now,” said Jerry, when they were out of sight of the little mountain cottage among the rhododendrons, “how would it be if we tried to find that conference camp before we leave this region, and also perhaps look up our friend? Then I thought we’d stop somewhere and give poor Uncle Blake a call or a telegram or something to ease his mind about us. We’ve only a little over a month left before we go home now, and it seems too bad to leave Uncle Blake in the dark all this time, with just that last notice in the paper, saying we were all right in a quiet place where we couldn’t get newspapers.”
“I don’t think we ought to run any risks now,” said Jennifer, “even if the time is short. It would just spoil everything. We’ll send another notice to the New York paper, and we’ll go hunt the conference if you like. I don’t believe that young man will put the police on us. He doesn’t look like that kind.”
“Of course he won’t!” said Karen with an air of resentment. “He’s a Christian! But here, Jerry, here’s where you turn around the mountain. That’s the way he brought me back.”
“Are you sure, kid? I thought he said I took the right fork.”
“No, you turn to the left. I guess I know!”
So Jerry humored her and they swept on around a lovely country road with high hills on every side and a few mountains in the near distance. At last they came to a white bridge over a turbulent little stream with a few milk rapids at one point, and Karen shouted with joy. “Here it is! Here’s my bridge! And over there is my big white house with the reading on the roof and the cross on the top. See, Jerry, it’s all white now, it isn’t lighted. But can’t you see the reading on the roof? That’s ‘Jesus saves.’ Jack told me so. I read the word Jesus all by myself, and he told me the rest. Now, was I right, Jerry Graeme, or wasn’t I?”
“Well, it seems as if you must have been right, all right.” Jerry grinned. “Now, what do we do, sister?”
“Oh, stay here!” cried Karen. “I want to stay here awhile and go to meeting and hear Jack talk some more. I didn’t hear him talk much because I had to interrupt him the last time I was here and make him take me home, but I want to go to a meeting and really hear him again!”
“Well, what do you say, Jen? Shall we try it?”
“Why, if there was any place we could get a little cabin or something, I’d say try it. You know a religious camp is the last place in the world those aunts would ever think of hunting us.”
“That’s so,” said Jerry. “Well, Tryon, you get out and scout around. We’ll just draw up here at the side of the road and wait while you see if there’s a prospect of any place to stay.”
“It would have to be something by ourselves,” added Jennifer. “We could never risk going to a hotel or boardinghouse with a mob like this, you know.”
“Okay!” said Tryon and swung off among a group of young people going toward the big building with the cross on the top.
Chapter 19
A good many of the young people were carrying Bibles.
“That’s funny,” said Jerry. “Say, maybe there’ll be a chance to look into the Bible a little. I’ve always wondered about it.”
“You couldn’t learn much in just a few days,” said Jennifer doubtfully.
Tryon was gone quite a little while. They saw him walk along with other young people to the great building and step inside. They saw him come out another door at the side and take a look at the tennis courts and cross the road and look at the shuffleboards and swings. They saw him go up the hill and enter a big homelike place with wide porches all around.
Then they grew absorbed in listening to wonderful singing that came from the great building under the cross and forgot to watch for Tryon. Until, at last, he suddenly appeared among them again and got into the car.
“It’s a swell place!” he announced. “That’s a tabernacle over there. They’re having a meeting now. They have meetings in the morning and evening, and in the afternoon they go swimming in that stream we crossed, and they play games. That’s the dormitory up there, at least it’s a dormitory for girls, and there are lots of others, and cabins for boys, but they don’t allow children here. There’s a camp for little girls and another for young boys, and the rest stay here.
“Oh!” said Jennifer. “Then it’s no use! We can’t stay! We’ve got to keep together!”
“Of course,” said Tryon. “I told ’em that, and they said there was a little cottage just beyond here we could rent. It only has two rooms and a kitchen, but there are plenty of cots if we wanted to look at it. The people in it are leaving this afternoon. This place closes in another week, so we couldn’t stay long, anyway. Would you like to drive around and look at the cottage, Jen?”
“Why yes, if Jerry thinks it’s all right,” said Jennifer.
“Okay with me!” said Jerry. So they followed Tryon’s directions and came to a tiny rough sort of cabin built in the woods. They couldn’t go in yet, not until afternoon, but they were charmed with the set-up and the view of the little tumbling stream that sang along below the road.
They drove a couple of miles down to a village and got some lunch, and then they came back and waited until the tenants of the cottage left. Before night they had turned in with glee and were as settled and happy as any campers could be. This was a place that the aunts would never, never think to look for them.
That night after the children were asleep and Jennifer had decided she wanted to get to sleep at once also, Jerry and Tryon went out to the big tabernacle to their first meeting.
Jennifer lay in her cot beside the little girls and heard the singing, hymns and choruses. It seemed to her heavenly. She thought of her mother and father in the Father’s house and wondered if they were joining in singing like that, and tears stung into her eyes
at the thought.
When Jerry and Tryon came back, she slipped out with her robe around her and sat on Tryon’s cot while they told about the meeting.
“It’s the greatest thing I ever heard!” said Jerry. “I wish we’d known about this before. We might have been here all summer, and it only lasts a week longer! But believe me; we’ll come here next year if we have to build a house just outside the grounds to get us all in.”
“But if the children are not allowed, how could we?” said Jennifer. “They have to be our chief concern for the next few years.”
“Yes, of course,” said Jeremy. “But they are allowed to come to the meetings if their folks come with them. It’s only that they can’t take them in and board them. They couldn’t, there would be so many. But if we had a little place just out a ways like this we could go to all their meetings and get the good of it.”
So the next morning when they heard the bell ring they all wended their way to the tabernacle and took seats where they could hear everything.
“You mustn’t wriggle around or make a noise, you know,” warned Jennifer to Robin and Karen, “or they’ll not let us stay in this nice place.”
So the children sat down with great awe and listened wide eyed to all that went on. The singing first, how they all enjoyed it! Even Robin took a book and held it upside down and opened his mouth wide to sing with the rest. And then came prayers and testimonies of how different ones had been saved here in this wonderful conference. The Graemes learned that to be saved meant to know that your sins were forgiven by God because He punished His Son, Jesus Christ, for them instead of you.
It was all new to them, though they had been to formal church and Sunday school all their lives. What they had learned there had been mere words, Bible verses and stories that had never been applied for them to their daily living, with its troubles and temptations. It seemed a revelation to them now. Perhaps they were ready to take it in now because, from the eldest to the least, they had all felt the need of some Great One who loved them, in whom they could trust. There was a Bible lesson, with a great chart stretched across the platform to make it all plain to them.