'Auntie!' he said, smiling a very little; 'how pretty you look!'
And so she did in her long white dressing-gown, with her lovely fair hair hanging about, for all the world like Miss Lally's.
I think myself the fever was on his brain a little already, else he would scarce have dared speak so to his aunt.
She took no notice, but drew me out of the room.
'What in the world's the matter with him?' she said, anxious and yet irritated at the same time. 'Has he been doing anything foolish that can have made him ill?'
I shook my head.
'It's seldom one can tell how illness comes, but I feel sure the doctor should see him,' I replied.
So he was sent for, and before the day was many hours older, there was little doubt left—though, as I said before, I tried for a bit to hope it was only a bad cold—that Master Francis was in for something very serious.
Almost from the first the doctor spoke of rheumatic fever. There was a sort of comfort in this, bad as it was—the comfort of knowing there was no infection to fear. It was a great comfort to Master Francis himself, whenever he felt the least bit easier, now and then to see his cousins for a minute or two at a time, without any risk to them. For one of his first questions to the doctor was whether his illness was anything the others could catch.
After that for a few days he was so bad that he could really think of nothing but how to bear the pain patiently. Then when he grew a shade better, he began thinking about going to school.
'What was the day of the month? Would he be well, quite well, by the 20th, or whatever day school began? Uncle would be so disappointed if it had to be put off'—and so on, over and over again, till at last I had to speak, not only to the doctor, but to Sir Hulbert himself, about the way the boy was worrying in his mind.
The doctor tried to put him off by saying he was getting on famously, and such-like speeches. A few quiet words from Sir Hulbert had far more effect.
'My dear boy,' he said gravely, 'what you have to do is to try to get well and not fret yourself. If it is God's will that your going to school should be put off, you must not take it to heart. You're not in such a hurry to leave us as all that, are you?'
The last few words were spoken very kindly and he smiled as he said them. I was glad of it, for I had not thought his uncle quite as tender of the boy as he had used to be. They pleased Master Francis, I could see, and another thought came into his mind which helped to quiet him.
'Anyway, nurse,' he said to me one day, 'there'll be a good deal of expense saved if I don't go to school till Easter.'
It never struck him that there are few things more expensive than illness, and as I had no idea till my lady told me that the term had to be paid for, whether he went to school or not, I was able to agree with him.
I was deeply sorry for my lady in those days. Some might be hard upon her, for not forgetting all else in thankfulness that the child's life was spared, and I know she tried to do so, but it was difficult. And when she spoke out to me one day, and told me about the schooling having to be paid all the same, I really did feel for her; knowing through Mrs. Brent, as I have mentioned, all the past history of the troubles brought about by poor Master Francis's father.
'I hope he'll live to be a comfort to you yet, if I may say so, my lady, and I've a strong feeling that he will,' I said (she reminded me of those words long after), 'and in the meantime you may trust to Mrs. Brent and me to keep all expense down as much as possible, while seeing that Master Francis has all he needs. I'm sure we can manage without a sick-nurse now.'
For there had been some talk of having one sent for from London, though in those days it was less done than seems the case now.
And after a while things began to mend. It was not a very bad attack, less so than we had feared at first. In about ten days' time Mrs. Brent and Susan the housemaid and I, who had taken it in turns to sit up all night, were able to go to bed as usual, only seeing to it that the fire was made up once in the night, so as to last on till morning, and the day's work grew steadily lighter.
Once they had finished their lessons, the little girls were always eager to keep their cousin company. He was only allowed to have them one at a time. Miss Bess used to take the first turn, but it was hard work for her, poor child, to keep still, though it grew easier for her when it got the length of his being able for reading aloud. But Miss Lally from the first was a perfect model of a little sick-nurse. Mouse was no word for her, so still and noiseless and yet so watchful was she, and if ever she was left in charge of giving him his medicine at a certain time, I could feel as sure as sure that it wouldn't be forgotten. When he was inclined to talk a little, she knew just how to manage him—how to amuse him without exciting him at all, and always to cheer him up.
The weather was unusually bad just then, though we did our best to prevent Master Francis feeling it, by keeping his room always at an even heat, but there were many days on which the young ladies couldn't get out. Altogether it was a trying time, and for no one more than for my lady.
I couldn't help thinking sometimes how different it would have been if Master Francis had been her own child, when the joy of his recovering would have made all other troubles seem nothing. I felt it both for her and for him, though I don't think he noticed it himself; and after all, now that I can look back on things having come so perfectly right, perhaps it is foolish to recall those shadows. Only it makes the picture of their lives more true.
Through it all I could see my lady was trying her best to have none but kind and nice feelings.
'The doctor says that though Francis will really be almost as well as usual in three or four weeks from now, there can be no question of his going to school for ever so long—perhaps not at all this year.'
'Dear, dear,' I said. 'But you won't have to go on paying for it all the same, my lady?'
She smiled at this.
'No, no, not quite so bad as that, only this one term, which is paid already. Sir Hulbert might have got off paying it if he had really explained how difficult it was. But that's just the sort of thing it would really be lowering for him to do,' and she sighed. 'The doctor says too,' she went on again, 'that by rights the boy should have a course of German baths, that might do him good for all his life; but how we could manage that I can't see, though Sir Hulbert is actually thinking of it. I doubt if he would think of it as much if it were for one of our own children,' she added rather bitterly.
'He feels Master Francis a sort of charge, I suppose,' I said, meaning to show my sympathy.
'He is a charge indeed,' said his aunt. 'And to think that all this time he might have been really improving at school.'
I could say nothing more, but I did grieve that she couldn't take things in a different spirit.
'It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good.' Miss Lally had a fine time for her knitting just then, with Master Francis out of the way. Of course if he had been at school there would have been no difficulty, and she had planned to have his socks ready to send him on his birthday, the end of March. Now she had got on so fast—one sock finished and the heel of the other turned, though not without many sighs and even a few tears—that she hoped to have them as a surprise the first day he came down to the nursery.
'I'll have to begin working in the attic again, after that,' she said to me, 'for I'm going to make a pair for baby.'
'That's to say if the weather gets warmer,' I said to her. 'You certainly couldn't have sat up in the attic these last few weeks, Miss Lally.'