They reached the top of the stairs and paused before a door through which came a strange murmuring voice.
“Jim won’t know you, sir,—not now,” said Mrs. Burnham, “but if you’d be willing just to sit there a while, maybe—”
“Of course,” said Stacey. “You have a good doctor?”
“Yes, sir. At least, I guess he’s good. They don’t any of them seem much help. He’ll be here at ten o’clock.”
They went in, Stacey and Mrs. Burnham; the children were left outside the door. Burnham, flushed with fever, lay tossing and muttering on a narrow bed. Stacey looked down at him and lifted his hot hand, but there was no recognition in the man’s eyes.
“I’ll sit here,” said Stacey after a moment, drawing up a chair beside the bed.
The woman silently took another chair, and they remained so for an hour and a half, neither of them speaking, she rising at regular intervals to press a spoonful of medicine between her husband’s teeth, until the doctor arrived.
He was brusque, had keen eyes, and appeared competent. Stacey drew him aside at the conclusion of the visit.
“Any chance?”
“Yes,” said the doctor, “fifty-fifty. He’s as likely to recover as not. Splendid physique! There’s nothing much I can do except to give stimulants in case of sudden collapse. We don’t know anything about flu really, you know, and this pneumonia that follows on flu. I’ve seen hundreds die of it—I was in France, too,—and hundreds get well,—both without any reason. Served under you?”