And after a while things began to mend. It was not a very bad attack, less so than we had feared at first. In about ten days' time Mrs. Brent and Susan the housemaid and I, who had taken it in turns to sit up all night, were able to go to bed as usual, only seeing to it that the fire was made up once in the night, so as to last on till morning, and the day's work grew steadily lighter.
Once they had finished their lessons, the little girls were always eager to keep their cousin company. He was only allowed to have them one at a time. Miss Bess used to take the first turn, but it was hard work for her, poor child, to keep still, though it grew easier for her when it got the length of his being able for reading aloud. But Miss Lally from the first was a perfect model of a little sick-nurse. Mouse was no word for her, so still and noiseless and yet so watchful was she, and if ever she was left in charge of giving him his medicine at a certain time, I could feel as sure as sure that it wouldn't be forgotten. When he was inclined to talk a little, she knew just how to manage him—how to amuse him without exciting him at all, and always to cheer him up.
The weather was unusually bad just then, though we did our best to prevent Master Francis feeling it, by keeping his room always at an even heat, but there were many days on which the young ladies couldn't get out. Altogether it was a trying time, and for no one more than for my lady.
I couldn't help thinking sometimes how different it would have been if Master Francis had been her own child, when the joy of his recovering would have made all other troubles seem nothing. I felt it both for her and for him, though I don't think he noticed it himself; and after all, now that I can look back on things having come so perfectly right, perhaps it is foolish to recall those shadows. Only it makes the picture of their lives more true.
Through it all I could see my lady was trying her best to have none but kind and nice feelings.
'The doctor says that though Francis will really be almost as well as usual in three or four weeks from now, there can be no question of his going to school for ever so long—perhaps not at all this year.'
'Dear, dear,' I said. 'But you won't have to go on paying for it all the same, my lady?'
She smiled at this.
'No, no, not quite so bad as that, only this one term, which is paid already. Sir Hulbert might have got off paying it if he had really explained how difficult it was. But that's just the sort of thing it would really be lowering for him to do,' and she sighed. 'The doctor says too,' she went on again, 'that by rights the boy should have a course of German baths, that might do him good for all his life; but how we could manage that I can't see, though Sir Hulbert is actually thinking of it. I doubt if he would think of it as much if it were for one of our own children,' she added rather bitterly.
'He feels Master Francis a sort of charge, I suppose,' I said, meaning to show my sympathy.