Then he kept ringing the changes on an expression I must have used in argument with his mother the day I persuaded her to keep his bedraggled foundling.
“Het is geen menigte poesjes, zegt Mijnheer; het is maar een stuk of een. Heus, moe, laat hem blijven. Niet bang, hoor, schattie, je bent maar een stuk of een! Pas op, Mijnheer, daar komt de fiets!” And so on da capo.
So wild and restless was he, the second evening of the fever, that we had to summon the doctor unexpectedly, quite late.
Yes; his condition was disquieting, and we must get him to sleep. It was largely a matter of nursing, at the moment; new medicine was sent for; his head was to be kept cool; and only one watcher was to remain in the room. Above all, no noise. If the English juffrouw, who seemed to understand the lad’s state, would consent to sit up to two or three o’clock, so much the better. The excited mother could have a rest meantime. Otherwise she would be fit for nothing next day.
KITTY GIVES KOPJES.
But no sooner had the good doctor softly closed the front door, than my landlady declared it was her intention to watch all night.
Kathleen was at her wits’ end. In vain did she make signs and talk emphatic English in her high voice, or try coaxing with a bit of the brogue. All her feminine free-masonry failed to communicate the faintest idea to the mother.
Uncle MacNamara, who had been waiting to take his daughter back to the Doelen, tried moral suasion in his own particular brand of German, and even in other tongues.—Terence says his father recited a well-known passage from the Iliad in his eagerness to be persuasive!—But all without avail. She wouldn’t heed anybody; and she wouldn’t go; she sat close to the cot, rocking violently to and fro, and moaning “Mijn eigen kind! mijn eigen kind!”
The little fevered face was puckered with a new perplexity at the sound of all this grief and the familiar voice.
“Moeder,” he cried, “moederr! Daar komt ie weer! Hij wou me in ’t water gooien. Moeder, vasthoue, hoor!”