“My head is pretty bad and dizzy,” he said. “I think it is the heat. I shall be better when I get to my room but I guess you will have to go with me. I don’t quite remember the way and am weak as water. I wish Tom were here.”

Colin looked at him in some alarm. He knew of the fever in the village, which was causing dismay among the inhabitants. As yet it had been confined to the poorer class in the narrow streets where there was filth with poverty and squalor. None of the better class had it and it hardly seemed possible to Colin that a guest in his house, where there was extreme cleanliness and every possible luxury, could fall a victim to the malarious disease. But there was certainly something wrong with Rex, whose speech became every moment more incoherent, and Colin went with him to his room and summoned the housekeeper, Mrs. Frye, and sent for the doctor, whom Nixon fortunately met near the house on his way from visiting a patient further up the road.

“He hasn’t the fever, of course?” Colin said, anxiously, as he watched the doctor examining Rex and taking his temperature. “He couldn’t get it in this house, where everything is spick and span clean, cellar whitewashed twice this year, drains clean as a whistle, traps all right, water filtered, and all that. He can’t have the fever!”

The doctor made no reply for a few moments, while he was dealing out medicine, with directions how to give it.

“I am very sorry,” he said, at last, “very sorry to tell you that in spite of your cellar and drain and traps and filtered water, Mr. Travers has the fever, and I think it has been coming on for some days. It bids fair to be the crazy kind, as he is already out of his head. Keep him as quiet as you can; better have a trained nurse at once. Good afternoon. I’ll look in again to-night. I have a good many more patients to see. The fever is spreading.”

CHAPTER XVIII
THE TRAINED NURSE

“Lord Harry! what am I to do, with fever in the house, and Giles gone and Miss Frye no more good than a setting hen, and I, who was never sick a day in my life worse than Mrs. Frye,” Colin thought, as he stood looking at Rex, who seemed in a heavy sleep, although he kept muttering about the well, and the broken glass, and the letter, and the sick brother, and Claremont, and the will, which he said he was going to contest and break.

“Confound that will! It’s bothering him to death,” Colin thought, “and will until the thing is decided. I wonder if he posted the letter he was writing. If so that will settle it. Rex,” he said, screaming as if the fever-tossed man, whose eyes were now wide open and staring at him, were deaf as a stone. “Have you sent the letter to Irene, you know?”

For a moment Rex looked at him as if in doubt of his meaning; then, as the past came back to him, he answered briskly, “Oh, yes, the letter you helped me write, with something about her pulse beating in unison with mine. I didn’t put that in, but I wrote the letter. It’s all right;” then he dozed off again and Colin did not dream that the letter was still in Rex’s pocket where he had put it when he started to see Rena and ask Irene’s address. It was on its way to New York, or soon would be, Colin thought, and felt relieved on that score. If Rex should get very sick it might, perhaps, be proper to send for Irene, and what was it the doctor said about a trained nurse? and where was he to get one? For a man strong as he was in some respects, he was weak and helpless in others. The household matters he left mostly with his housekeeper, Mrs. Frye, and as he was never sick himself, he had but little idea what he ought to do for Rex, who, now that he was in bed, had let go of himself and given up to the disease making rapid inroads upon him. Suddenly it occurred to Colin that Mrs. Parks would know what to do and where he could find a nurse. She knew everything and kept hold of everybody’s business. It would be some comfort to talk with her anyway, he thought, and just as we were sitting down to tea he appeared at the front door, on the brass knocker of which he made thunderous raps as if he were in a hurry.

“For land’s sake!” Mrs. Parks exclaimed, almost dropping the teapot in her surprise. “Go, Charlotte Ann, and see who is there and what he wants.”