“I want Mr Burge,” cried Hazel suddenly, and her voice sounded hard and strange. “Tell him to come to me—tell him to come.”
“Yes, yes, yes, my darling; he shall come soon.”
“He would catch the fever, do you say? No no; I could not give it to him; he is so kind and good. Tell Mr Geringer, mother, it is impossible; I could not be his wife.”
“Oh, my poor dear!” whispered Miss Burge, bathing Hazel’s burning forehead with the eau-de-cologne that Mrs Potts had now brought; “that poor, poor, burning, wandering brain. Why don’t the doctor come?”
Chapter Forty Three.
The Queen’s Physician.
It was many hours yet before the doctor came, for the life of one patient is no more to a medical man than that of another, and the great physician had several urgent cases to see before he could use the special train placed at his disposal by Hazel’s elderly lover, who had never left the station all the morning, and had given instructions that the starting of the train should be telegraphed to him from the terminus in town.
In addition, he had a messenger, in the shape of Feelier’s brother, who came to and fro every hour to where Mr William Forth Burge was walking up and down the platform, to deliver a report from Miss Burge on the patient’s state.