“Do keep your hands away! My head is splitting with pain.”
Involuntarily Ethel thought of the fever; the danger from which they had been reckoning had passed away. It was a low sort of typhus which had prevailed; not very extensively, and chiefly amidst the poor: the great fear had been, lest it should turn to a more malignant type. About half a dozen deaths had taken place altogether.
“Would you like me to bathe your forehead with water, Sarah Anne?” asked Ethel kindly. “Or to get you some eau-de-Cologne?”
“I should like you to wait until things are asked for, and not to worry me,” retorted Sarah Anne.
Ethel sighed. Not for the temper: Sarah Anne was always fractious in illness: but for the suffering she thought she saw, and the half doubt, half dread, which had arisen within her. “I think I had better call mamma,” she deliberated to herself. “Though, if she sees nothing unusually the matter with Sarah Anne, she will only be angry with me.”
Proceeding to her mother’s chamber, Ethel knocked softly. Lady Sarah slept still, but the entrance aroused her.
“Mamma, I do not like to disturb you; I was unwilling to do so: but Sarah Anne is ill.”
“Ill again! And only last week she was in bed three days! Poor dear sufferer! Is it her chest again?”
“Mamma, she seems unusually ill. Otherwise I should not have disturbed you. I feared—I thought—you will be angry with me if I say, perhaps?”
“Say what? Don’t stand like a statue, Ethel.”