"Now, look here," said the doctor, cutting short any possible objections, "this is a matter of life or death; there is no time to lose.—Will you or will you not come?" turning to Geo.
"Me, sir! I am sure I don't know. I don't know nothin' about nursing. I—-"
"You know quite enough. Nurse Blunt will be there when she can, and Mrs. Crowe will do her best. But the truth is, the poor man is violent. It is a strong man I want, with a steady nerve and a good temper. You, I think can answer to this description, and I think, after the pluck and ability you showed during the past week, that I can trust you."
Geo's eyes gleamed for a moment under their downcast lids, and he looked at his mother and Milly for inspiration; and the doctor's keen eye noticed with amusement that he sought Milly's counsel first.
"Oh, you must go," said Milly warmly, answering the look. "That would be a shame not to go to him. If only I was a man—-"
"Which you need not wish at all, Milly," said the doctor, laughing, for he had known Milly all her life. "You had better come and help Mrs. Lummis a bit every day, and let her son go.—Come along, Geo; put your night things together and let us be off." And so, as Mrs. Lummis expressed it afterwards, "the doctor was so terrible masterful he took him off before my own eyes as if he'd a-been no more'n a child!"
But Geo proved no child, and, indeed, it was no child's work he had to perform. For several nights he and Mrs. Crowe sat up with the sick man, who, until the fever had spent itself, was so strong that Geo had to put forth all his strength at times to hold him when the fits of delirium came on. Then came the inevitable weakness that follows fever, and so for a fortnight the vicar of Willowton lay between life and death.
"Quiet, nothing but absolute quiet, can save him," the doctor said. And so the bells were not rung for service; the carts and other vehicles that generally came rattling past the vicarage gate were now turned back at the top of the street, for a faithful guard was always set there to stop all traffic that way.
It was old Greenacre's idea. "That there rattlin' is 'mazin' bad for the 'hid,'" he said—"I mind that whin I was ill threugh bein' thrown off a wagon when I was a booy—and they didn't ought ter pass this way." So he established himself on a chair under the shadow of the garden wall, and sat patiently watching the egress through many a long hour, keeping the street. "Jest like a beggar with a tin mug and a paper pinned on his chist," said Corkam, who couldn't resist a sneer. But old Jimmy was not there all day, for there were grateful convalescents in the persons of Tom Chapman and his friends, who took their turn as sentry.
So the sick man, so carefully tended within and so guarded without, still hung on between life and death. And as he lay there powerless and speechless, that fickle jade Popularity stole back to his side. Shyly, shamefacedly, almost fearfully, people began to speak well of the man who was in all probability going to give his life for their well-being. He had had the grace to "ketch th' faver" just like one of themselves, and it was going as hard with him as it had gone with many of their own flesh and blood.