“I may nurse him? You will not be so cruel to keep me away?” Sheila had pleaded, her eyes full of tears.
The doctor had looked her all over, asked a few questions as to her health and general condition, and had then made answer—
“If you will be sensible and take the proper precautions, you may help in the nursing. Typhoid ought not to be passed from patient to nurse, though it sometimes is. But a person in good health, acting under direction, ought to escape. I will try and obtain a nurse for you, but we have had to send for a good many already. Under her you may help, and you also, Miss Ray, since you wish it so much. But remember that you must be reasonable and obedient, or I shall send you both packing in double quick time!”
And so when North came back from an anxious day in the town, during which time he had found that nearly a dozen of their people had sickened or were sickening with the insidious fever, he returned home to find grave faces awaiting him, together with the news that Oscar had come back with pronounced symptoms of the malady, and that Sheila was with him upstairs, a nurse being expected from London in the course of the evening.
North went straight up to his cousin’s room. Sheila sprang up, thinking it was the doctor’s step. He took both her hands in his and gave her a cousinly kiss of sympathy. It was the first time he had offered her such a salute, and somehow it brought the tears to Sheila’s eyes. She felt that it was a mark of sympathy she scarcely expected from the undemonstrative North.
“What a good thing that you are here, Sheila!” he said.
“Oh, I am so thankful!” said the girl. “I should not have known how to bear it out there!” and she suddenly felt a wonderful illumination of spirit, as she realised the Fatherly guiding in all this trouble, as she had thought it, which had ended by bringing her to her brother’s side, just when he needed her most.
“I will try never to be angry and rebellious again!” she said in her heart, and turned to the fire to dash the tears from her eyes.
North went over to the bed and took Oscar’s hot hand in his. The listlessness of fever was upon the patient, but his eyes lighted at sight of his cousin.
“How’s little Tom? Have you heard of him?”