“I want to see Mrs. Parks,” he said. “I want to see all the women-folks,” he continued, walking straight through the hall into the dining-room, the door of which was open. “There’s the old Harry to pay up at our house. Giles is gone, and Mrs. Frye—well, she’s great on soups and welch rabbits and salads and sweet breads, but is no more good where there is sickness than a hen with its head cut off, and we’ve got to have a trained nurse, the doctor says, and he’s out of his head—crazy as a loon—talking about half of a face and one eye which he sees all the time—and the will and the lookin’ glass. Demnation! I’m glad the thing is broke and sunk! Such infernal nonsense, and to think he, of all men, should try it! Great Scott! Who can I get to nurse him? I’m so wet with worry that there isn’t a dry thread on me.”
He sank into a chair looking the picture of distress while we sat staring at him.
“What’s the matter? Who is sick?” Mrs. Parks asked, and he replied:
“Lord Harry! haven’t I told you? Rex, to be sure. Who else should be, with Giles gone and me here. He has been taken sudden with fever, though the doctor says it has been coming on for days, and our cellar and drains all right and no smells anywhere. Why should he have a fever?” After a little direct questioning we managed to learn that Mr. Travers was very ill, and that the doctor had recommended a nurse, for whom Mr. McPherson was in search. “A trained one,” he said. “And where am I to find her, the right kind, I mean? I can’t have no second-class truck in the house.”
“Mr. Travers got the fever!” Mrs. Parks exclaimed. “That is sudden. Why, he was here this morning to see Miss Burdick off. But come to think on’t, he did look rather pimpin’. Want a nuss! There’s Sally Ann Ross, lazy as the rot, and Mary Jane Moore, stupid and shiffless, and the Widder Jones, pretty fair—but none of ’em is trained. We hain’t that kind in Oakfield, and they cost awful—fifteen or twenty dollars a week.”
“What do I care how much she costs? If Rex needs a trained nurse, he is going to have her, if there’s one this side of Boston,” Colin replied, and by the merest chance his eyes rested on me, who had sat thinking while Mrs. Parks descanted on the merits and demerits of Sally Ann and Mary Jane and the Widow Jones.
Before taking up stenography, I had studied for a trained nurse in a New York hospital and had passed a creditable examination, and for nearly two years had practised almost constantly until my health failed and I was obliged to abandon my profession and seek another employment where the responsibility and strain upon my nerves were not so great. I was very well now. Rest and Oakfield air had done me a great deal of good. I had still three weeks’ vacation and the thought entered my mind, Why not offer my services? I had had a great deal of experience with fever in its worst form and had never lost a case. In a few words I told him that I had once been a trained nurse, and offered to go to Mr. Travers until something better could be done.
“You a nuss! Well, I never! What will happen next?” Mrs. Parks exclaimed, and I think I sank a little in her estimation. “You a trained nuss! How did it happen, and why didn’t you stick to it?”
As well as I could I explained, while Mr. McPherson listened and finally said:
“I b’lieve you’ll do, and I’m glad, for I’m afraid he’s goin’ to be awful sick, it comes on so fast, and that quill or something the doctor put in his mouth registered over a hundred. Can you go to-night?”