He pulled down the little blind over the open window, and set a jug of milk and water with a glass by his mother's bedside, and smoothed the sheet over her hot and tossing limbs.
"You just sing out, mother, if you want anything," he said, speaking in a comfortable, low-toned voice that did not jar on her aching nerves. "Or if you can't sleep. I'll come and set by you. I'd like to do that now if you'd let me."
"No, no, Geo my boy, that I won't; I'm quite comfortable as far as that goes. If it wasn't for the heat, maybe I'd get some sleep myself. You go to bed now, and when you wake come in and see after me. I'll call you sure enough if I want you."
So Geo came away, and throwing himself on his bed was soon sound asleep.
In the house next door a girl was ill. Mrs. Lummis had been helping to nurse her. If only she could be left, her mother would come and see after her, she well knew; for the poor are always at their best in times of illness, and the way they help each other is a pattern to those above them. But the girl was very bad indeed, not likely to recover, and Mrs. Lummis could not look for help from the nearly worn-out mother. It was a comfort that Geo seemed to be so handy. She was lucky, she thought, to have such a son; but she felt anxious, knowing that her illness was likely to be a long one. She knew not of the likelihood of the nurse coming to her. Like everybody else in the village, she knew of her advent, but nobody had told her she had really come. If she had she would have passed a less miserable night, perhaps; for, of course, nothing was farther away from her than sleep.
After all she had heard, nurse was rather surprised, when she knocked at the door about seven o'clock next morning, to find it opened to her by a pleasant, bright-faced young man, who looked as if he had just dipped his head into a tub of cold water, so fresh was his colour.
"You haven't been up all night, I'll be bound," she inwardly ejaculated; "but you look different from what I expected."
"I am the new nurse," she said in answer to the astonishment that shot out of his blue eyes, "and the doctor has sent me to see after your mother. What sort of night has she had?"
"Pretty bad," said Geo. "I was just gettin' th' kettle to boil, and thought I'd make her some tea."
"Milk is better for her," said the nurse.