“How could I, when I knew you needed me?”
XXIV
TO GIVE DOROTHY A CHANCE
IT was nearly the Christmas time when Arthur finally broke up the fever camp. He decided that the outbreak was at an end and the need of a hospital service no longer pressing. The half dozen patients who remained at the camp were now so far advanced on the road to recovery that he felt it safe to remove them to the new quarters at the Silver Spring.
He had sent Dorothy home a week before, saying:
“Now, Dorothy, dear, we have conquered the enemy—you and I—and a glorious conquest it has been. We have had forty-seven cases of the disease, some of them very severe, and there have been only two deaths. Even they were scarcely attributable to the fever, as both the victims were old and decrepit, having little vitality with which to resist the malady. It is a record that ought to teach the doctors and planters of Virginia something as to the way in which to deal with such outbreaks. I shall prepare a little account of it for their benefit and publish it in a medical journal. But I never can tell you how greatly I thank you for your help.”
“Please don’t talk in that way,” Dorothy hastily rejoined. “Other people may thank me for things whenever they please, but you never must.”
“But why not, Dorothy?”
“Why, because—well, because you are the Master. I won’t have you thanking me just like other people. It humiliates me. It is like telling me you didn’t expect me to do my duty. No, that isn’t just what I mean. It is like telling me that you think of Dorothy just as you do of other people, or something of that kind. I can’t make out just what I mean, but I will not let you thank me.”
“I think I understand,” he answered. “But at any rate you’ll permit me to tell you, that in my honest judgment as a physician, there would have been many more deaths than there have been, if I had not had you to help me. Your own tireless nursing, and the extraordinary way in which you have made all the negro nurses carry out my orders to the letter, have saved many lives without any possibility of doubt.”
“Then I have really helped?”