“It will be hard for you,” said the doctor sympathetically, “but her case is urgent, and depends largely upon care. I will call again to-morrow. Good-night!”
“Now for some beds,” said Lizzette, all her energy returning. “Antoine, mon garçon, venez avec moi! You sall sleep now, for ze great fear ees ovair. La fievre, eet sall be easy cure.”
With tenderest ejaculations Lizzette picked up Antoine and carried him to bed. “Le bon Dieu!” exclaimed the lad fervently as he clasped his arms around his mother’s neck.
“Oui,” said Lizzette, kissing him. “He make all sings even.”
For three weeks there was but one thought, one hope, one fear in Lizzette’s little home. Margaret’s fever was of that low, obstinate type which is all the more difficult of cure by reason of its seeming lack of violence. Day slipped into night and night into day again all unheeded by the quiet figure on the bed. She seemed neither to hear nor to see, and only responded to the care bestowed upon her as a new-born infant responds to the fulfilment of its needs. She lay like one sleeping peacefully, and seldom evinced restlessness unless this lethargy was broken by demands upon her attention. At the end of the twenty-first day there came a visible change. Her features grew drawn and sunken; her hands became more restless, now idly picking at the bedclothes and anon clutching vaguely at the air. Her breath grew hourly and hourly more irregular; now sinking almost away, and again growing labored and painful.
“Now,” said the doctor, “is the hour of trial. Keep her strength up and we shall save her. She has a magnificent physique to aid us.”
Heavily dragged the hours as the four—Lizzette, Elsie, Gilbert, and the doctor—watched Margaret’s painful struggle for life. There seemed to be so little to do to save her. It was like barbarism to sit there and watch the regular administering of the necessary stimulant, and realize that upon it, and the recuperative power in the frail body, depended hope and life. Elsie, worn as she was with watching, was nearly mad with the desire to do something worth while, to be active in rousing Margaret to recognition, and not to feel almost guilty in the passiveness with which she watched the approach of the dread crisis.
“I shall go wild with waiting, doctor. Is there nothing more I can do?” she moaned.
“Nothing, child,” he answered sympathetically. “We are doing all that can be done.”
“Waiting is such hard work.”