"I will. How you bully a fellow! I tell you I'm not sick, to speak of. I'm only a little worried."
When Ravenel returned to his own apartment he found Lillie waiting to go down to dinner.
"How is he?" she asked the moment he opened the door.
"Very badly. Very feverish. Hardly in his right mind."
"Oh no, papa," remonstrated Lillie. "You always exaggerate such things. Now he isn't very bad; is he? Is he as sick as he was at Donnelsonville? You know how fast he got well then. I don't believe he is in any danger. Is he?"
She took a strong interest in him; it was her way to take an interest and to show it. She had much of what the French call expansion, and very little of self-repression whether in feeling or speech.
"I tell you, my dear, that I am exceedingly anxious. He is almost prostrated by weakness, and there is a febrile excitement which is weakening him still more. No immediate danger, you understand; but the case is certainly a very delicate and uncertain one. So many of these noble fellows die after they get home! I wouldn't be so anxious, only that he thinks he has a vast quantity of company business on hand which must be attended to at once."
"Can't we do it, or some of it, for him?"
"Perhaps so. I dare say. Yes, I think it likely. But now let us hurry down. I want to order something suitable for his dinner. I must buy a dose of morphine, too, that will make him sleep till to-morrow morning. He must sleep, or he won't live."
"Oh, papa! I hope you didn't talk that way to him. You are enough to frighten patients into the other world, you are always so anxious about them."