"When we got back here, there was not a fire in the house, and, do what I would, I got thoroughly chilled. I was shivering so, and I felt so feverish, that Marion insisted on spending the night with me. She slept in the room you have, and I was to knock on the wall if I wanted her."
Lucy stopped and shivered.
"There, dear," said Mona, "you will tell me the rest another time. You are tiring yourself."
"No, I am not; I like to tell you. Mona, I woke at two in the morning with these words in my mind, 'The sufferings of the damned.' Don't call me irreverent. You don't know what it is. It took me three-quarters of an hour to get out of bed to knock for Marion, and the tears were running down my face like rain."
"My poor baby!" Mona got up and knelt down beside her; but Lucy was already laughing at the next recollection.
"Oh, Mona, I did not see the comedy of it then, but I shall never forget that sight. The glimmering candle—Marion shivering in her night-dress, her sleepy eyes blinking as she read from a medical book, 'Rheumatism is probably due to excess of sarcolactic acid in the blood'! as if I was not far past caring what it was due to! Good old Marion! she dressed herself at once, and at six she went for Dr Bateson. Of course with the dawn the pain just came within the limits of endurance; but when the doctor gave me morphia, I could have fallen down and worshipped her."
"You poor little girl! How I wish I had been here! Let me go, dear, a minute. It is time for your medicine.'
"Nasty bitter-sweet stuff—I wish I could stop that!"
"Why? I am sure it has worked wonders. How I wish we knew exactly how it acts!"
Lucy laughed. "You are as bad as Marion," she said. "If you were on the rack, you would not trouble yourself to understand the mechanism that stopped the wheels, so long as they were stopped. I leave it to you, dear, to cultivate the infant bacillus on a nice little nutrient jelly, and then polish him off with a dilute solution of salicin."