“He’s alive?”
The doctor smiled with professional reassurance.
“Yes, he’s better this evening. I’ve told him you were coming.”
Tears came into her eyes and moistened the veil she hurriedly unwound. She tore off her wraps, and laid her hat on the hall tree. She rubbed her palms briskly together, pressed her fingers to her hair and her temples, and then:
“I’ll go to him at once.”
She started for the stairs, but paused there, leaning wearily on the baluster.
“What is it, Doctor, tell me?”
“Well,” the medical man said, “a general collapse. He was out Wednesday, and it rained, and he caught cold. Thursday he developed a bad attack of the grippe—and his heart action is weak, you know. He would not give up.”
“No, that was like him,” said Emily, as people always say of their loved ones at such a time, in the effort to recognize their strong qualities ere it be too late.
“He would not give up until Friday, but I made him go to bed then. The next day I feared his lungs were involved—he did not wish me to send for you.”