Zora had him carried to a room in the hotel and sent for a doctor, who kept him in bed for a fortnight. Zora and Turner nursed him, much to his apologetic content. The Callenders in the meanwhile went to Berlin.
When Septimus got up, gaunt and staring, he appealed to the beholder as the most helpless thing which the Creator had clothed in the semblance of a man.
"He must take very great care of himself for the next few weeks," said the doctor. "If he gets a relapse I won't answer for the consequences. Can't you take him somewhere?"
"Take him somewhere?" The idea had been worrying her for some days past. If she left him to his own initiative he would probably go and camp with Wiggleswick amid the ruins of his house in Shepherd's Bush, where he would fall ill again and die. She would be responsible.
"We can't leave him here, at any rate," she remarked to Turner.
Turner agreed. As well abandon a month-old baby on a doorstep and expect it to earn its livelihood. She also had come to take a proprietary interest in Septimus.
"He might stay with us in Nunsmere. What do you think, Turner?"
"I think, ma'am," said Turner, "that would be the least improper arrangement."
"He can have Cousin Jane's room," mused Zora, knowing that Cousin Jane would fly at her approach.