"Oh, but I can manage," cried Joanna—"let me nurse him. I can come and stop here, and nurse him day and night."
"I am sure there is no one whom he'd rather have than you, Miss Godden," said Dr. Taylor gallantly, "but of course you are not professional, and pneumonia wants thoroughly experienced nursing—the nurse counts more than the doctor in a case like this."
"Pneumonia! Is that what's the matter with him?"
They had left Martin's room, and the three of them were standing in the hall.
"I'm afraid that's it—only in the right lung so far."
"But you can stop it—you won't let him get worse. Pneumonia!..."
The word was full of a sinister horror to her, suggesting suffocation—agony. And Martin's chest had always been weak—the weak part of his strong body. She should have thought of that ... thought of it three nights ago when, all through her, he had been soaked with the wind-driven rain ... just like a drowned rat he had looked when they came to Ansdore, his cap dripping, the water running down his neck.... No, no, it could not be that—he couldn't have caught pneumonia just through getting wet that time—she had got wet a dunnamany times and not been tuppence the worse ... his lungs were not weak in that way—it was the London fogs that had disagreed with them, the doctor had said so, and had sent him away from town, to the Marsh and the rain.... He had been in London for the last two days, and the fog had got into his poor chest again,—that was all, and now that he was home on the Marsh he would soon be well—of course he would soon be well—she was a fool to fret. And now she would go upstairs and sit with him till the nurse came; it was her last chance of doing those little tender, rough, intimate things for him ... till they were married—oh, she wouldn't let him fling his clothes about like that when they were married! Meantime she would go up, and see that he swallowed every drop of the herb tea—that was the stuff to give anyone who was ill on the Marsh, no matter what the doctor said ... rheumatism, bronchitis, colic, it cured them all.
§22
Martin was very ill. The herb tea did not cure him, nor did the stuff the doctor gave him. Nor did the starched crackling nurse, who turned Joanna out of the room and exasperatingly spoke of Martin as "my patient."
Joanna had lunch with Sir Harry, who in the stress of anxiety was turning into something very like a father, and afterwards drove off in her trap to Rye, having forgotten all about the Honeychild errand. She went to the fruiterers, and ordered grapes and peaches.