But on this occasion as the carriage stopped in front of the ample pile of the house Hattie called out, "Oh, there she is now," and Lloyd came down the steps, carrying her nurse's bag in her hand.
"Are we too late?" began Hattie; "are you going out; are you on a case? Is that why you've got your bag? We thought you were on a vacation."
Campbell, yielding to a certain feeling of uneasiness that Lloyd should stand on the curb while he remained seated, got out of the carriage and stood at her side, gravely listening to the talk between the nurse and her one-time patient. Lloyd was obliged to explain, turning now to Hattie, now to her father. She told them that she was in something of a hurry. She had just been specially called to take a very bad case of typhoid fever in a little suburb of the City, called Medford. It was not her turn to go, but the physicians in charge of the case, as sometimes happened, had asked especially for her.
"One of our people, a young woman named Miss Wakeley, has been on this case," she continued, "but it seems she has allowed herself to contract the disease herself. She went to the hospital this noon."
Campbell, his gravity suddenly broken up, exclaimed:
"Surely, Miss Searight, this is not the same case I read of in yesterday's paper—it must be, too—Medford was the name of the place. That case has killed one nurse already, and now the second one is down. Don't tell me you are going to take the same case."
"It is the same case," answered Lloyd, "and, of course, I am going to take it. Did you ever hear of a nurse doing otherwise? Why, it would seem—seem so—funny—"
There was no dissuading her, and Campbell and Hattie soon ceased even to try. She was impatient to be gone. The station was close at hand, and she would not hear of taking the carriage thither. However, before she left them she recurred again to the subject of her letter to Mr. Campbell, and then and there it was decided that Hattie and her maid should spend the following ten days at Lloyd's place in Bannister. The still country air, now that Hattie was able to take the short journey, would be more to her than many medicines, and the ponies and Lloyd's phaeton would be left there with Lewis for her use.
"And write often, won't you, Miss Searight?" exclaimed Hattie as Lloyd was saying good-bye. Lloyd shook her head.
"Not that of all things," she answered. "If I did that we might have you, too, down with typhoid. But you may write to me, and I hope you will," and she gave Hattie her new address.