I did give the landlady credit for an inexplicable fit of motherly kindness when, at length, fish and birds, nicely broiled, came up, every day or two, to brighten the pale little face laid against the cushions of his lounge; thanked her for them heartily and with emotion.
“It is not’ing!” she said, beaming (as when was she not?) “I only wis’ to know dat de beautiful child ees better. I t’ought he could taste de feesh.”
I was grateful and unsuspicious for a week, recanting, repentantly, the hard things I had said of continental human nature, and admitting Madame to the honorable list of exceptions, headed—far above hers—by Dr. Steiger’s name. Then, chancing to come down-stairs one day, shod with the “shoes of silence” I wore in the sick-room, I trod upon the heels of a handsome young Englishman, almost a stranger to me, who was spending the honeymoon with his bride in Switzerland. He had been three weeks in this house, and we had not exchanged ten sentences with him or his wife. He stood now in the hall, his back toward me, in close conference with Madame, our hostess. He was in sporting-costume, fishing-rod on shoulder. Madame held a fine fish, just caught, and was receiving his instructions delivered in excellent French:
“You will see that it is broiled—with care—you know, and sent, as you have done the others, to the little sick boy in No. 10. And this is for the cook!”
There was the chink of coin. The cook! whom I had feed generously and regularly for preparing the game and fish so acceptable to my child!
I stepped forward. “It is you, then, Mr. N——, whom I should thank!” with a two-edged glance that meant confusion to Madame, acknowledgment and apology to the real benefactor.
The young Briton blushed as if detected in a crime. Madame smiled, without blushing, and bustled off to the kitchen.
Happily, Americans are not without “contrivances” even on the Continent. A summary of ours while the fever-patient needed delicate food such as American nurses and mothers love to prepare, may be useful to other wayfarers on the “road to Jericho.” We carried our spirit-lamp and kettle with us everywhere. Besides these, I bought a small tin saucepan with a cover and a tin plate; made a gridiron of a piece of stout wire, and set up a hospital kitchen in one of our rooms at an open window that took smoke and odor out of the way. Here, for a month, we made beef-tea, broiled birds and steak and chops—the meat bought by ourselves in the town; cooked omelettes, gruel, arrowroot jelly, custards, and boiled the water for our “afternoon tea.” Cream-toast was another culinary success, but the bread was toasted down-stairs by the Invaluable when she could get—as she phrased it—“a chance at the kitchen-fire.” Cream and butter were heated in the covered tin-cup over our lamp.
For fifteen days, the fever ran without intermission, sometimes so fiercely that the brain raged into frenzied wanderings; for three weeks, our Swiss doctor came morning, afternoon or evening—sometimes all three; for a month, our boy was a prisoner to his own room, and we attended upon his convalescence before daring to strike camp and move northward into Germany. And all in consequence of that long walk, without shade of trees or umbrella, under the treacherous Swiss sun! We had had our lesson. I pass it on to those who may be willing to profit thereby.