"Have you a thermometer, Ruth?"
Ruth had—a legacy from Miss Caryll's days. In a moment she re-appeared with it, washed it, and put it into the Captain's mouth. Then she plucked it out, and took it to the window. It marked 102.
"What is it?" asked the sick man.
"It's a little up," answered Ruth, shaking the thermometer down.
"What is it?" repeated the other.
Ruth had not nursed Miss Caryll for two years in vain.
"It's a shade over normal," she said. "Hap it'll be a bit higher this evening."
Outside she told Madame.
"I shall send for Mr. Trupp," that lady said, and telephoned at once.
The great man came, grumbling and grousing. What did he—who loved to describe his surgery as carpentry, and himself as a mechanic—know of Indian fevers?