"It feels hot. Would you like to have it bathed in cold water?"
"If you please, ma'am. I have been calling Hettie, and she won't hear."
"Because she has gone out. Let me see if I can't do it just as well as Hettie."
She hunted about the room for a cloth, but, finding nothing suitable, took her cambric handkerchief, and, after laving his forehead gently for ten or fifteen minutes, laid the wet folds upon it, and asked smilingly—
"Doesn't that feel pleasant?"
"Ever so nice, ma'am—if I had some to drink."
She put the dripping gourd to his parched lips, and, after shaking up his pillow and straightening the covering of his pallet, she promised to see him again soon, and returned to his mother.
"How does he appear to be, Miss Irene? I had him moved out of this room because he said my coughing hurt his head, and his continual fretting worried me. I am so weak now, God help me!" and she covered her eyes with one hand.
"He has some fever, Mrs. Davis, but not more than Susan. I will ask Dr. Arnold to come and see them this evening. This change in the weather is very well calculated to make sickness. Are you entirely out of wood?"
"Very nearly, ma'am; a few sticks left."