“Please don’t vex yourself,” said she; “you could not have done otherwise, and perhaps the move would have hurt him more than staying there. You have been so very kind. See what you have done here!”
For Armine, after some hours that had been very distressing, had sunk into a calm sleep, and there was a far less oppressed look on his wan little face.
The doctor would have had her take some rest, but she shook her head. The only means of allaying the gnawing anxiety for Jock, and the despairing fancies about his suffering and Johnny’s helplessness, was the attending constantly to Armine.
“Anyway, I will see him to-day,” said Dr. Medlicott, impelled far more by the patient silence with which she sat, one hand against her beating heart, than he would have been by any entreaty. But how she thanked him when she found him really setting forth! She insisted on his taking a guide, as much for his own security as to carry some additional comforts to the prisoners, and she committed to him two little notes, one to each boy, written through a mist of tears. Yes; tears, unusual as they were with her, were called forth as much by the kindness she met with as by her sick yearning after the two lonely boys. And when she knew the doctor was on his way, she could yield to Armine’s signs of entreaty, lie back in her chair and sleep, while Reeves watched over him.
When the doctor, by a strong man’s determination, had made his way up the pass, he found matters better than he had dared to expect. The patient was certainly not worse, and the medicine had kept him in a sleepy, tranquil state, in which he hardly realised the situation. His young attendant was just considering how to husband the last draught, when the welcome, dripping visitor appeared. The patient was not in bad spirits considering, and could not but feel himself reprieved by the weather. He was too sleepy to feel the dulness of his present position, and even allowed that his impromptu nurse had done tolerably well. Johnny had been ready at every call, had rubbed away an attack of pain, hurt wonderfully little in lifting him, and was “not half a bad lot altogether”—an admission of which doctor and nurse knew the full worth.
Johnny himself was pleased and grateful, and had that sort of satisfaction which belongs to the finding out of one’s own available talent. He had done what was pronounced the right thing; and not only that, but he had liked the doing it, and he declared himself not afraid to encounter another night alone with his cousin. He had picked up enough vernacular German to make himself understood, and indeed was a decided favourite with Fraulein Rosalie, who would do anything for her dear young Herr. It was possible to get a fair amount of sleep, and Dr. Medlicott felt satisfied that the charge was not too much for him, and indeed there was no other alternative. The doctor stayed as long as he could, and did his best to enliven the dulness by producing a pocketful of Tauchnitzes, and sitting talking while the patient dozed. Johnny showed such intelligent curiosity as to the how and why of the symptoms and their counteraction, that after some explanation the doctor said, “You ought to be one of us, my friend.”
“I have sometimes thought about it,” said John.
“Indeed!” cried the doctor, like an enthusiast in his profession; and John, though not a ready speaker, was drawn on by his notes of interest to say, “I don’t really like anything so much as making out about man and what one is made of.”
“Physiology?”
“Yes,” said the boy, who had been shy of uttering the scientific term. “There’s nothing like it for interest, it seems to me. Besides, one is more sure of being of use that way than in any other.”