Then she remembered the telegram, and starting up exclaimed:
“If I am his sister I may surely go to him. I have a right, and no one can gainsay it.”
She was in Mrs. Tiffe’s room in an instant, and greatly astonished that good woman by declaring her intention of going herself to New York to take care of Godfrey.
“You, you go to nurse a young man! Are you crazy, child?” Mrs. Tiffe exclaimed.
Gertie did not know whether she was crazy or not; she half believed she was, but on one point she was decided. She should go to New York, and she put on her cloak and furs and hat, and bidding Mrs. Tiffe take good care of Arthur, and send her a few articles of wearing apparel by the next day’s express, went out of the house and started for the station on foot before Mrs. Tiffe had time to realize fully what it meant, and that after all the trouble of packing her trunk and ordering the servants what to do in her absence, she must stay at home and let Gertie go in her place.
“It will be the ruination of her,” she said, “for folks will talk,” and nothing but the fact that the whistle of the train was just then heard in the distance, prevented her from starting in hot pursuit. “I can’t get there now with the swiftest horse in the stable,” she reflected, and she did not believe Gertie would be in time either.
But she was, for when she too heard the train she ran like a frightened deer, and half-stumbled, half-fell upon the platform of the rear car just as it was beginning to move from the station.
CHAPTER LVII.
IN NEW YORK.
Godfrey was very sick, and had been for some days, though it was not until the morning when the telegram was forwarded that his fever assumed the typhoid form and danger was apprehended. A message had been sent to his Aunt Rossiter when he first became ill, but she was in Washington with Miss Creighton, and as the landlady knew nothing of the Calverts, her only alternative was to telegraph to Schuyler Hill, when the matter became alarming and her boarder delirious. Oh, how he tossed and rolled and raved and talked, fancying himself on the sea, and twice throwing himself out of bed because that was the proper thing to do when the ship gave a great lurch as the waves broke over it. Then he was sea-sick and tried to vomit, and wore himself out in his efforts, and screamed to a fancied Bob in the upper berth, to know how he was coming through. Then he stormed at Dan for bringing him sea-water to drink, and when the ship began to pitch again he tried to stand upon his head, and then sprang back upon his feet to preserve his equilibrium, he said to the scandalized and horrified Mrs. Wilson, who fled from him in dismay as the worst-behaved sick man she had ever seen. Then as the vessel ceased to pitch he grew more quiet, and only rolled with the imaginary ship, and talked about “La Sœur,” and begged his landlady to bring her to him, and promised to stop rolling if she would.