“Doctor, you don’t think—are there any more cases of scarlet fever?” and her voice was tremulous.
“Scarlet fever! Don’t get any such nonsense in your curly pate. No, there’s not another case and the little girl is recovering rapidly. Why you’ve not been even exposed to it and yours is just a cold. Now, alternate with these and I’ll be in again this afternoon. But, I’d stay in bed and rest.”
She slipped into a soft white wrapper, and Katy came in to straighten up her room.
“You were out late last night, Miss Zay and you’ve caught a cold.”
“But, I so rarely have a cold.”
“It sounds in your voice. Keep wrapped up good and warm. There’s nothing like heat to drive out those pernickety colds and I wish you’d drink some hot water.”
“I’ll see by and by.”
She turned her hot throbbing temple over on the pillow. If only she could shut out the sight and the smell of the clairvoyant’s room, and that boy grasping for breath. It must have been something awful for them both to die almost together and be shut up at once in their coffins; and then a horror seized her. She had always been so well and joyous. Oh, what if she should die? It would kill her mother. Girls were more to their mothers; business called so many of the boys away.
She began to cry. The doctor and her father went down stairs. She thought her mother would come in and tried to calm the sort of hysterical mood. What were they talking about so long? Was she worse than the doctor had admitted? She heard her father’s voice rise as if in a passion which his visitor seemed trying to subdue. Oh, what had happened?
Her mother entered the room very pale and with frightened eyes.