When finally we had finished, and I had reluctantly risen, she said: “Mr. Morgan, I should like it very much if you would get me a broom.”
“Nothing will be easier, Miss Housekeeper,” replied I, and immediately brought in a cedar-bough. This she eyed ruefully, but accepted as the only available substitute for the familiar domestic weapon.
All that day I devoted to the work of clearing out the store-house, cutting the opening, rigging up the curtain, and building a bunk for myself in the new apartment. I did not build the second bunk, as I had intended, for a new plan had occurred to me; namely, to construct a movable couch for Mr. Millward to lie upon, and on which I could convey him on occasion out into the sun or on the porch, and upon which he might be propped up in a sitting posture. But before the day was over I had arranged some shelving at each side of the fireplace for Miss Millward’s dishes and domestic appliances. It was simply delightful to be called to a dinner that I had no hand in preparing, and to witness the air of homelike comfort given to the little house by this girl. The whole atmosphere seemed changed. Not that one could note any great or marked alteration; but in little details here and there, were evidences of a woman’s hand,--a bit of white cloth disposed over the windows as a curtain, my nautilus shell set on the mantel-shelf with a spray of flowers, and a hundred similar trifles; perhaps most of all, the unaccustomed presence of others, the sound of a woman’s voice, her light footstep, and the rustle of her garments. I did not attempt to analyze my feelings, but at any rate the place seemed like a home, and I began in advance to regret the day of leaving it.
That night I slept again at the shed. Before I retired, however, Miss Millward asked me to wait until she read a chapter in the Bible to her father. And when this was done she gently lifted the old man’s helpless hands together in an attitude of prayer, and then prayed aloud herself, in such a pathetic and tender manner that the tears came to my eyes in spite of myself.
The next day, after getting a stock of cedar, I started to fashion the couch for Mr. Millward. This with the making of another armchair occupied two days. The couch I made like a great chair, with a back pivoted to fold down or prop up, and wove an upholstery of rushes. It occurred to me that I could easily saw some wheels out of a round limb and mount them as rollers on which to move the couch more easily over the smooth floor; and this improvement I added. When the couch was finished there was then a bunk for each of the well ones and the couch for the invalid, and I therefore took up my quarters in the house, which I was glad to do, as I could then give Miss Millward a needed relief in helping watch the sick man at night. By wheeling his couch beside my own this was an easy matter.