"She's goin' to be all right in the long run," said Mrs. O'Mara. "I gev' her a wee drink o' water, an' she kem to herself fur a minute. An' I says, 'Me dear, where did ye git yer fever?' An' she says, 'The swamp, I think. Don't I have to travel to-day? I'm in bed.' An' I says, 'Not to-day nor anny day till ye want, me child,' and she turns over an' snuggles down like a lamb. An' I've sponged her off with cool water, an' she feels better, though she's off agin, an' I'm afraid the fever'll be runnin' up on us before the doctor can git here."
"You mean she isn't sensible now?" demanded Francis, whose eyes had lighted up with hope when she began to speak.
"Well, not so's ye could talk to her. An' ye might excite her. Them they loves does often."
"Then I wouldn't," said Francis recklessly. "Oh, Mother O'Mara, I've been such a brute——"
"Hush, hush now, don't ye be tellin' me. Sure we're all brutes wanst in awhile. Ye feel that way because the child's sick. Now go out and watch fer the doctor, or do annything else that'll amuse ye."
He obeyed her as if he were a little boy. He was so miserable that he would have done what any one told him just then—if Logan, even, with his cane and his superciliousness, had given him a direction he would probably have obeyed it blindly.
Mrs. O'Mara went back to the sick-room. How much she knew of the situation she never told. But Peggy was not a secretive person, and Peggy had arrived at a point with Logan where he told her a good deal, if she coaxed. They never got it out of the old lady, at any rate.
Marjorie was quieter, but still not herself. Mrs. O'Mara, who was an experienced nurse, did not like the way she had collapsed so completely. She was afraid it was going to be a hard illness, and she knew Francis was breaking his heart over it.
"Still it may be a blessin' in a way," she said half aloud. "You never can tell in this world o' grief and danger. I wonder has she people besides Mr. Francis. They've never either of them said."
The doctor came and went, and Monday morning dawned, when Francis had to go to work whether or no. And Pennington quietly took over Marjorie's duties again, and the men tiptoed up to the cabin where she lay, and asked about her anxiously, and young Peggy came over and took turns with her mother in the nursing, and Logan, much more robust and tanned than he had been in several years of New York life in heated apartments, came with her and sat on the porch waiting till she came out; and Francis saw him there, and thought nothing of it except that he was grateful to him for being interested in Marjorie.