“Yes, yes, Tony, my child,” Ida answered. “Sleep now; you will be getting up early in the morning, and you won’t get enough rest.”
“All right, Ida. You will wake me at six o’clock?”
“Half-past is early enough, child. The carriage is ordered for eight. Go on sleeping, so you will look fresh and pretty.”
“Oh, I haven’t slept at all yet.”
“Now, Tony, that is a bad child. Do you want to look all knocked up for the picnic? Drink seven swallows of water, and then lie down and count a thousand.”
“Oh, Ida, do come here a minute. I can’t sleep, I tell you, and my head aches for thinking. Feel—I think I have some fever, and there is something the matter with my tummy again. Or is it because I am anæmic? The veins in my temples are all swollen and they beat so that it hurts; but still, there may be too little blood in my head.”
A chair was pushed back, and Ida Jungmann’s lean, vigorous figure, in her unfashionable brown gown, appeared between the portières.
“Now, now, Tony—fever? Let me feel, my child—I’ll make you a compress.”
She went with her long firm masculine tread to the chest for a handkerchief, dipped it into the water-basin, and, going back to the bed, laid it on Tony’s forehead, stroking her brow a few times with both hands.
“Thank you, Ida; that feels good.—Oh, please sit down a few minutes, good old Ida. Sit down on the edge of the bed. You see, I keep thinking the whole time about to-morrow. What shall I do? My head is going round and round.”