"Is that better?"
"Yes, Daddy! . . . Ever so much!"
She became quieter and gently pulled my other hand into the bed and commenced cuddling it. For half an hour or more I stayed with her until she fell into a fitful sleep. Then I crept downstairs to the fire and warmed my frozen limbs and feet.
That bedroom scene was the first in a long and agonizing series which lasted for over a week.
The locum tenens to our old family doctor fought back the menace, first of rheumatic fever and then of pneumonia. For days, it was touch and go which of the dread diseases she might contract, but she had a strong constitution—thank God!—and both Nanny and Gran'pa sank their grievances in a common service to their idol. Nothing was too much trouble for them. Nanny was just her own sweet, motherly self! But Gran'pa rose to heights of such unselfish devotion as I had never imagined. He spent practically the whole day and half of each night in her bedroom—watching her when she was asleep, and reading to her and playing games with her when she was awake.
"My God, George!" he said, "I don't think I shall ever be able to forgive myself."
His spirit of penitence and humility bordered on the pathetic. By some miracle, he had escaped Heaven knew what complications himself and he seemed determined to devote his remaining strength to succoring Molly in her dire hour of need. Gone was all his obstinacy, his freakishness. In that week of torment he had grown to years of discretion and achieved a mental stability far beyond my wildest hopes. Behind him, he had some seventy to eighty years' experience of human nature, and he brought it all to bear on Molly's particular temperament, with a wisdom which astonished even the doctor in attendance.
"The most wonderful old man I've ever seen!" he observed.
I did not mention the gland business, as I thought Gran'pa might be offended.
"He's certainly very tough!" I answered.