"Do as you like, Athel! But I'm for being on the safe side, if you ask me." And the Rector was obliged to admit to himself that accepting the advice that enjoins caution is a very different thing from running a risk on permission given. The doctor said that if all disorders were accounted infectious until the contrary was shown to be the case, it would be a good thing for the public, but a bad one for the profession and the bacilli. A man must live. So must a bacillus, from his point of view.
Discussion was afoot at one time about the possibility of sending Lizarann to Tunis, where the ex-incumbent of St. Vulgate's would take her in hand and look after her. He was sending highly-coloured reports of his own progress. But these schemes never fructified. The fact, though it was admitted, that it would have been an excessive interpretation of Samaritan good-nature had less to do with their rejection than the inevitable separation of the child from her father. "She'll never come back to England if she goes," said Dr. Sidrophel; meaning that she would only be safe in Africa if she did outgrow her symptoms. But would she be sure to outgrow them?—said Athelstan Taylor, Miss Fossett, and Miss Caldecott, all at once. "That's more than I would swear to," said the doctor. It was a relief, because you know what a stiff job this sending patients abroad is. Most of us do.
But, short of sending Lizarann to be nursed in an antitubercular climate, everything was done for her that could have been done in Samaria itself, with additions up-to-date, such as ozone, peptone, hypophosphites, and several other "ites" and "ones."
So dexterously was her removal to Mrs. Fox's cottage brought about that neither she nor her Daddy ever had a suspicion of the truth. Obviously, so everyone thought, the reason was that she should guide her Daddy to the well-head every morning before going to school, and bring him back in the evening. Lizarann's rejoicing over her importance made up to her for her separation from Phœbe and Joan. The whole manœuvre was executed without a mishap, and Lizarann started in the summer weather to install her Daddy in safety, and to return for him in the course of the afternoon, duly calling out "Pi-lot!" at a chosen point. Phœbe and Joan gave her up with reluctance, but acknowledged the force of the reasons for the change. They were plausible.
Mrs. Fox put her to sleep in a sweet little room under the thatch, with a lattice-window you could stand open and hear the wind in the trees all night. And a bed with a white tester and a fringe, and a white vallance all round underneath. Only the curtains were chintz, with roses done on them, shiny-like; and the counterpane was made of pieces of everything sewn together. Wherever anyone could have got 'em all from Lizarann couldn't think.
From underneath which counterpane the occupant of that bed continued an early riser throughout those three satisfactory months. Because Lizarann had nothing the matter with her. Ridiculous! Why shouldn't she cough if she chose? That was her view. And why shouldn't she go to the window to see how the sunflower was getting on! The sunflower grew on a giant plant that had shot up flush with the roof—a record in growth. Lizarann looked out at it every morning, and wondered how big ever was it going to get. She didn't know which she liked best, the back or the front of that sunflower. Sunflower-backs are very fascinating.
She had a little triumph over her Daddy and Mrs. Forks about that window. For they belonged to the old school of nursing, which went for suffocation, and had told her not to go to the window at six in the morning in her nightgown. Dr. Sidrophel, when appealed to, said: "Hurt you to go to the open window? Not a bit of it! More open windows the better!" So Lizarann kept on looking out at it until the rime frostis come in October; and then Jarge coot it off for her, not too high up to the coop, and Lizarann's prevision that it would be as big as her head was shown to be very, very far short of truth.
"There, now, Daddy," said the convalescent, on her way to the well, with her convoy in tow, after Dr. Sidrophel had endorsed the views of the new school so vigorously. "Dr. Spiderophel said I was-s-s-s-S quite well!" The climax of a prolonged sibilant, crescendo, burst like a shell against the coming initial, and stung its adverb to vigorous action.
"Who said you warn't, lassie?" said her father, affecting indignation.
"Phœbe and Jones. And Mr. Yorick, he's always for asking what did the doctor said."