Free Spice Box by Grace Livingston Hill Page A

faint smile.
    “I don’t know where
here
is, you know,” she said quaintly.
    “Of course, I forgot. Well, we’ll have to remedy that as soon as possible. How soon do you think you will feel well enough to take a ride with me? When you are, I’ll drive you around and give you a glimpse of the place. It is called Enderby, and it is about ninety miles from the place where I found you. Enderby is a very pretty spot, especially at this time of year. I really think a drive might do you a lot of good, put some color into those white cheeks and a little brightness in your eyes. Then we can talk more about all these things and perhaps settle on some name by which you can be known. Be thinking up a few questions you would like to ask me if you want to. How soon do you think you would enjoy getting out in the spring air?”
    Janice smiled gently.
    “You are very kind,” she said, “but you don’t need to go to all that trouble. I am all right, and I’ll be up and around soon now. But there is one question I would like to ask you. Would you be likely to know of any place around here where I can get a job so that I can pay the hospital here what I owe them, and pay you? That is the only question that interests me now.”
    “Well, perhaps I might,” said the doctor thoughtfully, “but I wouldn’t want you to try any hard work at present. I want to keep a close watch on you for a while to make sure there are no complications lingering around to make trouble for you later in your life. But I’ll be thinking about it. I wonder—how would you like to be doing something around the hospital for a while? There are light office jobs, work at the desk, meeting parents of the child patients, something like that. Would that interest you? And later you might even start to take nurse’s training if you are interested in that.”
    A light came to Janice’s eyes and a quick flush of color to her cheeks.
    “Oh, that would be wonderful! Could I really? Yes, I should like to do anything like that, in fact, anything you feel I can. At least until my bills are paid.”
    “Well, don’t fret about bills. That will all come in good time. Get well first. And in the meantime, take a little nap right away, and then begin to think about the name you want to be called.”
    “I don’t want to think anymore about that,” she said. “You may tell them I am Mary Whitmore.”
    He looked at her keenly for an instant, wondering if that was real or an assumed name, but he took it in his best style, with an easy smile.
    “Fine!” he said. “That sounds good. I think it fits you nicely. Now, close your eyes and go to sleep. Set your thoughts on getting ready for that drive in the country as soon as possible.”
    Then with a cordial smile he left her, and she lay there thinking how very kind he had been and how easy he had made the matter of her name. After all, she had not had to tell him whether that was her real name or not, and she didn’t feel worried now about it, for Mary was her middle name, although she never used it. The people she knew would not remember it. They had never known her as Mary, and she doubted if Herbert had ever known about it either. At least he wouldn’t be looking for her under that name.
    Drifting off to a restful sleep, she thought again how kind and helpful that doctor had been. She owed her life to him, and she supposed she ought to be grateful, although it would have been such a happy release if she could have gone on to heaven with her sister. But then that was not a thing she had any right to think about. God had put her here, as the doctor had said, with some purpose, and she must stay until He took her away. That was practically what the doctor had said. He must be a Christian. It was what her Christian mother and father had taught her before they left her. It was what her sister believed, and what she had been trained to believe. Of course it was right. And of course she must be glad that her life was saved.