And the man, wishing to say No, as in many other things the boy asked, answered, “Yes.”
Autumn came—and winter. The Boy began to thrive so well that even father marvelled at the change; there was no outdoor sport fit for his age that Ernest did not enter with him, and the long evenings were filled with delight drawn from all of childhood’s countries, Fairyland being not the least. Christmas was the time set for the Marches to return, but new business at Washington claimed the father, and after a brief week spent in house closing, mother and daughter joined him there; and from that time Eileen came to be more and more of an unreality save to the Boy, who seemed to regard her portrait as a living actuality and the third person of the household, saying one day to the Man: “I’m going to marry the Princess when I grow up if she will wait, and not grow old. Do you think, Daddy, Eileen will ever be old like Aunt Louisa?”
“She will never grow old to me; she has stopped,” the Man answered.
The spring of the following year was cold and very wet, bringing more illness than usual to the well-drained hill country, especially to the children. There was scarlet fever at Bridgeton, and some one brought it to the Ridge School, the Boy being one of its first victims.
“Who is going to nurse the Boy?” asked father. “Aunt Louisa is too old, and no risk must be taken with him. His bed must be moved into the large room with the open chimney, and a log fire kept on the hearth. Would you like me to send over a trained nurse from the Bridgeton Hospital?”
“I will care for him,” said Ernest, setting about the preparation of the room as quietly as a woman could.
That night began a siege that lasted for weeks that seemed like years: on one side deafness and blindness in league with death, on the other side Nature, the doctor, and the Man, while between them lay the Boy.
From the end of the first week the doctor came twice daily, then followed nights when he never went away. Meanwhile, the Man prayed wordless prayers, fought on, refusing to be discouraged, seeming to infuse his own vitality into the Boy’s failing pulse by sheer force of will. Yet all this time the doctor dared not look him in the eyes, so fierce their agonized questioning.