Ah, well! it was a blissful half-hour which followed, filled with the inevitable questionings and recollections which every fresh Adam and Eve believe to be their own exclusive property. “What did you think?”
“What did you mean?”
“Why did you say?”
“What was the first—the very first moment when you began to care?” Hand in hand they passed along the country lanes, the reins lying slack on the necks of their tired steeds; hand in hand they turned in at the farther gate of the ploughed roads which lay across the fields, and halfway along its length came suddenly upon the two still, half-conscious figures of Dreda and Norah West.
Chapter Twenty Five.
The alarm was given at the nearest farm, and the two girls conveyed with all speed to The Meads, where a doctor was at once summoned to their aid.
Norah’s right knee was found to be badly fractured, from the effects of which she had to face intense pain and discomfort for some days, and a long, dragging convalescence. Given rest and care, however, recovery was only a matter of time, and the onlookers were less anxious about her than the other patient, who was raving with delirium in an adjoining room. Dreda, like many robust people, had been more affected by the deadly chill of those long waiting hours than was her more fragile companion. Perhaps in nursing Norah upon her knee she had screened her friend from the biting wind, which had seemed to cut like knives through her own back. She had been like a figure of ice when she was carried into the house; but before she had been an hour in bed the reaction had set in and she was burning with a fever heat.
The old nursery expression, “hotty-cold,” was a true description of that miserable night, when she alternately shuddered and burnt, and when morning came the dread word “pneumonia” was whispered from lip to lip. A hospital nurse was called in to aid Mrs Saxon in the care of the two patients. Rowena took over the housekeeping duties, and went about her work with a smile on her lips and a tear in her eye. Poor, poor darling Dreda! It was pitiful to hear her loud, painful breathing. Rowena’s heart stood still at the thought that Dreda’s life was in danger—but Guy was coming. Guy would take her in his arms; she would lay her tired head on Guy’s broad shoulder, and be comforted. Was it wrong to feel that nothing, nothing in the world could be unbearable while Guy’s arms held her close?