“With me, my dear little man, quite safe. Don’t talk now; you are weak. I am going to give you something nice to eat.”
“I am—awfully hungry,” said the child.
The nurse knelt low by his side. She fed him by drops. She had made up her mind that the child should live. Her exertions were rewarded. She thought of nothing else at the moment, her soul was filled with pure gladness. She even forgot Tarbot.
“They all think that he is screwed up in his little coffin—that he is dead, dead, dead!” she said to herself, “and yet I have him here alive and well. It was a terrible experiment, but it has succeeded. I have saved him from the hands of a wicked man.” She clasped her hands, fell on her knees, and covered her face. “And yet I love that man,” she cried with a groan.
She trembled all over. The boy called her, however, and she had to exercise self-control. Hour by hour he was now getting rapidly better. Not only did he recover full consciousness, but he seemed stronger than before the long trance to which he had been subjected.
“It is a wonderful case,” thought Nurse Ives. “More wonderful even than that case which excited so much remark in Paris when I was with Dr. Weismann. I am the cleverest woman in England—I have brought the dead back to life. You will do now, my little man,” she said aloud, looking at the child as she spoke.
The boy was gazing at her intently. He was sitting up; he looked quite strong, and there was color in his cheeks.
“Where am I?” he asked. He gazed anxiously round the queer little room.
“You are on a visit to me, I am taking care of you. I am your nurse. Don’t you love me?”
“But you aren’t my real nurse,” said little Piers. “What folly you talk! You’re only the woman who came in to nurse me when I was taken ill. Where am I? I want to go home to mother and to Dick. Where is Dick? He was the last person I saw before——” The child began to shudder and tremble.