CHAPTER XXIV INTERRUPTED PLANS
Porter had wakened that morning with a pain-racked body and the hot taste of fever in his mouth. He dressed and went downstairs to breakfast, but left the table and returned to his room to lie down.
"I'll be all right in an hour or so; I guess I've taken cold," he said to Evelyn. At the end of an hour he was shaking with a chill.
Evelyn left him alone to telephone for the doctor and in her absence he tried to rise and fainted. He was still lying on the floor when she returned. When the doctor came he found the household in a panic, and almost before Porter realized it, he was hazily watching the white cap of the trained nurse whom the doctor ordered with his medicines.
"Your father has a fever of some sort," he said to Evelyn. "It may be only a severe attack of malaria; but it's probably typhoid. In any event, there's nothing to be alarmed about. Mr. Porter has one of the old-fashioned constitutions," he added, reassuringly, "and there's nothing to fear for him."
Porter protested all the morning that he would go to his office after luncheon, but the temperature line on the nurse's chart climbed steadily upward. He resented the tyranny of the nurse, who moved about the room with an air of having been there always, and he was impatient under the efforts of Evelyn to soothe him. The doctor came again at noon. He was of Porter's age and an old friend; he dealt frankly with his patient now. Evelyn stood by and listened, adding her own words of pleading and cheer; and while the doctor gave instructions to the nurse outside, he relaxed, and let her smooth his pillow and bathe his hot brow.
"This may be my turn—" he began.
"Not by any manner of means, father," she broke in with a lightness she did not feel. It moved her greatly to see his weakness.