CHAPTER XVIII
THE LETTER
From the moment of his entrance to the sick room, old Joe assumed all charge to it, and with scant courtesy banished from it both Angelique and Margot.
“But he is mine, my own precious uncle. Joe has no right to keep me out!” protested Margot, vehemently.
Angelique was wiser. “In his own way, among his own folks, that Indian good doctor. Leave him be. Yes. If my master can be save’, Joe Wills’ll save him. That’s as God plans; but if I hadn’t broke——”
“Angelique! Don’t you ever, ever let me hear that dreadful talk again! I can’t bear it. I don’t believe it. I won’t hear it. I will not. Do you suppose that our dear Lord is—will——”
She could not finish her sentence and Angelique was frightened by the intensity of the girl’s excitement. Was she, too, growing feverish and ill? But Margot’s outburst had worked off some of her own uncomprehended terror, and she grew calm again. Though it had not been put into so many words, she knew from both Angelique’s and Joseph’s manner that they anticipated but one end to her guardian’s illness. She had never seen death, except among the birds and beasts of the forest, and even then it had been horrible to her; and that this should come into her own happy home was unbearable.
Then she reflected. Hugh Dutton’s example had been her instruction, and she had never seen him idle. At times when he seemed most so, sitting among his books, or gazing silently into the fire, his brain had been active over some problem that perplexed or interested him. “Never hasting, never wasting,” time, nor thought, nor any energy of life. That was his rule and she would make it hers.