“H-m-m?—y-e-s—what’s—what’s the matter?” asked the boy, confusedly, lifting his head from the pillow and uttering a round dozen of sleepy sentences before consciousness came back—a specially slow process with him.
“Breakfast is ready,” laughed Touchtone. “Only ourselves to eat it. Come. It’s a stunning day. How do you feel?”
“O, I’m all right.”
But his flushed face and unduly bright eyes and hot hands made Touchtone uneasy. He pronounced the breakfast indeed a quite surprising masterpiece, but hardly took the practical interest in it that Philip expected. When he got up from the table, yawning, he suddenly declared that he felt “too tired to walk.” Even his concern for this remarkable situation, and his eagerness to have it changed for the better, seemed slight. He moved listlessly about the rooms and door-ways while Touchtone cleared away the table.
“I guess I’m too much used up to care about the Probascos, or the house here, or how to get word ashore, or—well—any thing,” he declared apologetically. Touchtone was not surprised, nor relieved. Alone he went down to the cove, Towzer at his heels, taking a short cut that saved the long walk by the road. In dismay, he realized what he had feared—that the boat was indeed gone, drifted out to sea, likely, or along toward the coast with the turning of the tide.
“How abominably careless of me!” he exclaimed, appreciating that every thing must be at a completer stand-still because of this loss. He could not find another boat about the Probasco’s dock nor stored in the one or two deposits of miscellanies, nautical and agricultural.
“We’ve got to wait, with a vengeance!” he said to himself. Curiosity as to his hosts gave place to angry impatience at his having taken things so for granted and at his own heedlessness; came, too, greater anxiety for Mr. Marcy’s and Mr. Saxton’s enlightenment. “They may have had our funerals, Towzer; given us both up for dead!” he exclaimed, addressing the attentive representative of the absent farm-house folk. Towzer seemed resolved that nothing should be done without his notice, and trotted at Touchtone’s heels every-where.
He was dismayed when he crossed the threshold of the farm-house. Gerald had gone back to bed with a throbbing headache and what Philip rightly judged would prove a fever. It gained perceptibly. By noon the younger boy was tossing in a restlessness that hinted at coming delirium. Now and then, as he dreamed, he muttered to imaginary people, or, awakened again, he would ask Touchtone questions that were pitiful in their sudden intensity and unanswerableness. Philip knew that a new care and suspense had come.
“He’s very ill—very! And he’s likely to go on and become worse.” This great fear made Philip forget every thing else that was to be worried over. What should he do? How add the knowledge and care of a doctor and a nurse to the burden already on his shoulders? “If he does get downright sick, I don’t know enough to fight the thing. I’ll do the best I can to keep him comfortable. But, O, if any body could only come! What on earth would I best begin with?” He felt his own self-dependence giving way.