"Will you need me here to-night, Belle?" asked Bethany.
The nurse turned to Dr. Mills inquiringly. He shook his head. "Miss Carleton can do all that is necessary," he said. "I shall come again about midnight, and stay the rest of the night, if I am needed. He will probably have no more rational awakenings while this fever keeps at such a frightful heat. If we can subdue that soon, he has such great vitality he may pull through all right."
"You'd better go back, dear," urged the nurse. "You have your work ahead of you to-morrow, and you look very tired."
"I have an almost unbearable headache," admitted Bethany, "or I would not think of leaving. I would not go even for that, if I thought he would have conscious intervals of any length; but the doctor thinks that is hardly probable to-night. I'll come back early in the morning. Maybe he will know me then."
"Are you going, too?" asked Lee, clinging wistfully to David's hand, as Bethany put on her hat.
"Would you like me to stay?" he asked, kindly.
Lee swallowed hard, and winked fast to keep back the tears.
"Everybody else is strangers," he said, with his lip trembling.
David put his arm around him caressingly. His sympathies went out strongly to the little lad, who might so soon be left fatherless.
"Then I'll come back and stay with you till you go to sleep, after I take Miss Hallam home," he promised.