“Arthur is very low down; the doctor doesn’t think there is much chance of his pulling through, but if both the boys are taken, it will be my death-blow. I’ve got a sort o’ feeling inside me, that I can’t stand up against it nohows.”
Gertrude slid her arm through her father’s, and laid her cheek against the rough sleeve of his jacket. There was no word of comfort that she could say to him, but for the time her pity for his suffering was so keen, that she had no opportunity of giving way to her own sorrow.
Mounting the rise, the horses broke into a quicker pace, went down the hill through the village—the town, some people called it—tore round the corner, and, dashing past the saw-mills, took the next rise at a gallop.
“Father, how did the boys get sick?” Gertrude asked, after a long silence. She was growing desperate now, for the line of trees right in front of them marked the boundary-line of Lorimer’s Clearing, and she must know about the trouble before she reached home and met her mother.
“There’s a sort o’ malarial fever going about; it don’t amount to much if you stay in bed and keep warm when it’s on you. The boys took it, but there was no keeping ’em in bed, and one day they went bathing in the Black Cauldron—you know how cold the water is there—and that’s what did the mischief. Patsey looks poorly this morning, and your mother is keeping him in bed. It is a good thing harvest is over; if the sickness had come two weeks ago, it would have been pretty near ruin.”
Gertrude nodded. Having been brought up on a farm, she understood very well what a frightful disaster sickness in harvest time would be.
“Lots of folks are ill round about here,” Abe went on, as if he found it a relief to talk, now that the ice was broken. “The doctor said this morning that Giles Bailey’s aunt was very bad, so sick he didn’t think she’d pull through, and there ain’t a woman to be got for love or money to sit up with her o’ nights.”
“Giles Bailey’s aunt?” echoed Gertrude. “I don’t think I know them, either nephew or aunt.”
“Very likely not. The aunt, Mrs. Munson, has got a farm about five miles the other side of the boundary, and Giles works it for her. A good sort of lad, but slow. He used to come over to singing-school last winter at Pratt’s Corner, but the boys said school was mostly half over before Giles turned up, and that he’d no more notion of singing than a raven.”
Gertrude smiled, but a sob came up in her throat, and had to be battled with. Percy and Arthur sang so beautifully themselves, and had always been regarded as the stars of the winter singing-school.