"Better, thank God!" he replied.
"Were you with him all night?"
"Yes, all night. I must go out this morning to see some patients. I'll send up a nurse from the hospital on my way. I don't think the delirium will return before mid-day; can you watch him till then, Anna?"—and he asked with a seeming doubt either of my willingness or my ability, perhaps a mingling of both.
I did not like to recount my serious failures with Miss Axtell, but I answered,—
"I will try."
Before he went, he took me in to the place of my watching. The gentleman was asleep. The housekeeper was quite willing to relinquish her office. The good physician gave me orders concerning the febrifuge to be administered in case of increase of febrile symptoms, and saying that "it wouldn't be long ere some one came to relieve me," he bent over the sleeping patient for an instant, and the next was gone.
I think a half-hour must have fled in silence, when Jeffy stole in, his eyes opening as Chloe's had done not many days agone, when the vision of myself was painted thereon. I upheld a cautionary index, and he was still as a mouse, but like a mouse he proceeded to investigate; he opened a bureau-drawer the least way, and pushing his arm in where my laces were wont to dwell, he drew out, with exultant delight, the wig before mentioned.
"What do you s'pose he wants with this thing'?" whispered Jeffy; and he pointed to the soft, fair masses of curling hair that rested against the pillow.
Jeffy was a spoiled boy,—"my doing," everybody said, and it may have been truly. He was Chloe's son, and had inherited her ways and affectionate heart, and for these I forgave him much.
I said, "Hush!"—whereupon he lifted up the wig and deposited it upon the top of his tangled circlets of hair before I could stay him.