Upstairs Cary tossed in her delirium.
"Johnny, don't make me keep still! I can't keep still any longer! The water looks so cold—"
And so the day wore on. The dry cough stopped and the fever ran higher and the breathing came more labored, and Cary lay wide eyed and sleepless.
The children wandered like little ghosts through the rooms of the lower floor. They pleaded that they might see Cary once. The post surgeon tried an experiment.
"The child's strength is going fast for lack of sleep," he told Mrs. Stewart, "We'll see what your boys can do."
He brought Rob in first, and Trevelyan's son stood at the foot of the bed, and was silent as they had bidden him to be; but they could see that he trembled.
Cary's eyes, bright with delirious fever, rested on him for a moment. Then she started up in bed.
"It's Rob, dear," said Rob's aunt, bending over her.
"No, it isn't!" cried Cary. "No—it—isn't! Take him away; away—a-w-a-y!"
Rob let go of the brass railing and rushed impetuously to the little girl's side and flung himself down by the bed.