“I—I feel as if I should burst!” cried Ruth expressively. “My heart is so full that I can’t bear another thing! Everything seems to have happened at once, and I feel crushed!”
“It’s so bad that it must get better! it can’t possibly get worse!” said Mollie, persistently hopeful in the midst of her misery.
But alas, her prophecy was not justified by events! Mrs Connor crawled about the house for another week, looking every day smaller and more fragile; and then a morning came when she could not rise from bed, and all other anxieties seemed to dwindle in significance when the illness took a serious turn, and her precious life itself seemed in danger.
Chapter Thirty Four.
The Silver Lining.
Ruth and Mollie constituted themselves nurses, Mollie, as the more robust of the two, insisting upon taking as her share the arduous night duties. Trix found time to attend to the housekeeping between school hours, the younger children were housed by sympathetic friends, and on the once noisy house settled down that painful silence which prevails when a fight is being waged between life and death.
At the beginning of the illness Ruth was dismayed to see a stranger in Dr Maclure’s place, but on the third day he appeared, bringing with him an atmosphere of comfort and security. One felt now that all that was possible from human skill and care would be done for the dear invalid, and, busy man as he was, Dr Maclure found time for several visits a day, until the first acute anxiety was passed. Until then his intercourse with Ruth had been solely that of physician and nurse, but one morning, when the invalid’s temperature and pulse both showed a satisfactory decline, he walked into the dining-room on the way to the door, and motioned Ruth to a seat.
“Sit down for a moment. I want to have a little talk with you. It is a doctor’s duty to see that a nurse does not overtax her strength, and you are looking very ill these last few days. I am going to prescribe a tonic which I want you to take regularly, and you must contrive to have a walk each day, and, if possible, a rest in the afternoon. You might lie down on the sofa while your mother is dozing.”