"Then I will be there at six, also; I wish to talk with Doctor Wing," Helen observed, and Mrs. Harding, anxious to get back to her charge, but evidently relieved to have her responsibility shared, went her way.
When Helen had leased her apartment at the Grenoble, she had hired another smaller suite of two rooms and bath, adjoining, and running at right angles with it. These she had fitted up attractively as a studio, where she gave her lessons and prepared for her social engagements, thus leaving her apartment free for Dorrie to entertain her friends whenever she wished. At her request, her landlord had cut a door between the suites, and this arrangement had enabled her to go back and forth without being obliged to pass through the public hall.
While talking with Mrs. Harding she had conceived a plan to meet Doctor Wing's desire for better air and good care for his patient. She would put a bed and other comforts in the larger room of the studio. Mrs. Harding was a good, sensible, reliable woman, capable in every way—and she would engage her and a trained nurse, if necessary, to take care of the invalid. John should have every possible chance for his life that she could give him, and perhaps this would blot out that dreadful suspicion he had voiced that she had wished him out of the way.
She unfolded this plan to Doctor Wing when she went to Mrs. Harding's to meet him, at six o'clock, and, the physician cordially approving it, in less than three hours the sick man was transferred to Helen's cheerful, well-ventilated rooms, with good Mrs. Harding as nurse and attendant.
The woman said she would prefer to take care of him alone; she believed she could do it, and it would be much easier for her than to be subjected to the red tape and rigid rules of a trained nurse. Helen seconded this proposition, saying she, too, would do whatever she was able, and would stand ready to provide a trained nurse at any moment, if the plan did not work to Doctor Wing's entire satisfaction.
The physician gave his consent somewhat reluctantly, but said they would try it for a day or two. He was somewhat at a loss to understand Madam Ford's interest in the man, even though she had frankly explained that she had known both him and his family when, years ago, she also had lived in San Francisco.
However, it was no affair of his, only so far as it made better conditions for his patient; the rooms she offered were certainly more desirable than a cot in the public ward of a hospital would be, and madam, if she were doing this simply because of a friendly interest in him and his far-off family, was a rare woman, indeed.
For two weeks it seemed a doubtful battle for the sick man, who was delirious and entirely unconscious of his condition and surroundings; but at the end of that time he began slowly to mend, although he manifested very little interest in the fact, obediently submitting to whatever was done or prescribed for him, but with a feeble air of protest that was discouraging to those interested in him.
"He doesn't want to get well," Mrs. Harding told the physician, when he came one morning and found his patient very weak and unresponsive to his cheerful greeting.
"I know it, poor fellow!" he gravely replied. "But we will do the best we can for him, although it looks as if that 'best' will not keep him here very long."