“I love her so! I love her so! How can I give her up!” he suddenly exclaimed, throwing his arms down with great force upon the spread, while the perspiration rolled down his face, and his eyes glared at me questioningly and then wandered swiftly around the room.
He wanted to go home, he said; this was no place for him, and Fanny coming to-morrow. Once he tried to get up, but I kept him back, telling him to wait till to-morrow, when I hoped he would be better.
“What little dark-faced woman are you, I’d like to know, trying to boss me?” he said, looking curiously at me, as I kept my arm across his chest. “You can’t hold a candle to Fanny. Where is she? You go away and send her here.”
I knew he was not conscious of what he was saying, but in my nervous condition his words hurt me, and my voice shook as I replied, “Fanny has not come yet. You didn’t expect her till to-morrow. I am Annie. Don’t you know me Jack?”
Something in my voice arrested his attention, and looking fixedly at me he said, “You want to cry, don’t you? Put your head down here and have it out.” With one hand he drew my head down upon his other hand and kept it there, while I cried like a child. It was his part to comfort me now, and he tried to do so, asking why I cried and what had happened.
“Something has, I know; but I can’t remember what it is,” he said. “But never mind. We’ll meet it bravely together, little Annie-mother, and Fanny will be here to-morrow.”
That thought comforted him, and many times during the night as I sat by him he asked if it were to-morrow yet.
“The to-morrow, you know, when she is coming,” he would add, and to this I could truthfully answer no, even when it was the dawn of the to-morrow he had anticipated so much and the grey morning was looking in at the windows.
At an early hour Phyllis came to relieve me, and shivering in every limb and with my head aching as if it would burst, I crept up to my bed, where I fell at once into a heavy sleep which lasted for hours. When I awoke both Phyllis and the doctor were with me. The latter held a telegram from Katy, saying that she and Miss Errington would come that day as they had arranged. My first inquiry was for Jack.
“I am afraid he is in for brain fever,” the doctor said. “He has been working very hard lately, and this, with the wetting he got last night and the terrible blow have proved more than he can bear. He is apt to be flighty from pain anyway and is crazy as a loon this morning and is asking first if it is to-morrow, then for Fanny and then for Annie-mother. That I reckon is you, but you are better where you are for a day or so, or I shall have two on my hands, and I fancy Jack will be about as much as I can manage.”