Vanderplanck. She murmured something
about her doctor having prescribed medicine to be taken at that hour,
and then, the medicine appearing to have an immediate and salutary
effect, she found her color and her voice again, and took up the
conversation.
"Shocking! oh, shocking! _so_ sad for the poor young man--no
father--no--no mother there to care for him. He _it_ an orphan, is he
not?--no relatives, I suppose--no one who _belongs_ to him, poor boy!
Dear, dear!--but he's _not_ fatally injured, is he?--not fatally?"
"Oh, no," replied Cornelia, whose opinion of Aunt Margaret's character
was much improved by this evidently sincere sympathy in the suffering of
some one she had never seen--"oh, no; papa says he'll be all well in
three months."
"And he's staying at your house, and under your dear father's care?"
"Yes, he is now. Before his accident he was boarding at Abbie's, down in
the village. She would have been very kind to him, of course, but I
suppose he'd rather be at our house, because papa can always be at
hand."
While Cornelia was delivering this into the black ear-trumpet, she
turned her eyes away from Aunt Margaret's face, being in truth somewhat
embarrassed at talking so much about the man who had her heart.
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