"Caspar!" he called.
"Sir."
Ernie entered. Captain Royal lay in bed, a touch of colour in his cheeks, his skin dry, his hair bristling, his eyes suffused.
"I've got a touch of fever," he said. "And my head's stupid. You don't remember the prescription they used to give us in India. Quinine and—what?"
Ernie was far too vague to be of any help, and was testily dismissed. He left the sick-room. The Captain's helplessness roused the woman in him and disarmed the jealous male.
"It's nothing much," he told Ruth. "Only a go of malaria. He used to get it in India. Don't you worry."
Later in the morning Madame visited the sick man, and summed him up with those fine shrewd eyes of hers that let so little escape them.
The Captain was clearly running a temperature.
Madame put her plump be-ringed hand on his lean one, and then rang.
Ruth came.