“Surely this can’t be the man Foster said was ‘as cross as thunder?’” said I, thinking it utterly impossible that here was indeed the dreaded object I had been seeking.
“Well, yes, miss; the boys call him cross, but somehow I don’t think he means to be cross; only, you see he suffers so with that mashed-up limb, that he’s afraid they’ll touch him when they come near, and he calls out sudden like, and so they call him cross; but he’s as grateful as can be, for any little thing you do for him.”
“Oh! yes. The doctors would have taken his leg right off, but they say he’s too weak to stand it; you never saw such a sight; he and Robinson, there, are an awful pair to look at.”
“Is this Darlington? I heard Robinson say that Darlington was worse than he was.”
“Yes, ma’am; the doctor says he’s not worse, only they take it different. You see, poor Tom here, frets all the time, and don’t give himself no chance; but that fellow over there’ll worry through yet, if pluck can do it.”
This was afterwards confirmed by the surgeon himself. He assured me that Robinson’s wound had appeared quite as dangerous--indeed, at one time, even more so; but his quiet, placid disposition aided his recovery immensely; while the terribly nervous temperament, and high state of nervous irritability of poor Darlington, were equally against him.
“I’m glad enough he’s sleeping,” added Richards, “for he’s been here for three days, and this is the first time, night or day, that I’ve caught him with his eyes shut; lots of anodyne, too, the doctors give him. It’s worry, worry, worry from morning to night about his sister; he wants so to see her, and says if she were only here, she could come near his bed and it wouldn’t hurt him.”
“Where does she live? Why don’t they send for her? he can’t live.”
“Away off in Michigan; and he won’t even have her told that he’s sick; he says wait till he’s better, and then he’ll write; but he won’t have her frightened. If he could only forget her for a little while, it’s my notion he’d do better; but I tell him none of the boys here make half the fuss after their wives that he does after his sister. Poor boy! he’s just twenty-one since he came in here, and I rather guess they must have thought a sight of him at home,--at least, he does of them,--too much for his own good, that’s certain; this terrible fretting after home, when they’re sick, does the boys a lot of harm.”