“You can sleep with a quiet mind to-night,” she answered, lifting the coffee-pot from the stove and bringing it to pour him out a cup where he sat. “If your aunt is taken worse, I will be sure to call you; and if not, there won’t be any need for you to worry. I know quite a lot about nursing, and I always used to help with my father when he was ill.”
“Abe never did look like a strong man,” said the countryman, sleepily, and Nell darted a sudden look of alarm at him, wondering if he might be on the verge of some awkward questioning; so, to stave off the evil moment, she stepped into the next room, and busied herself looking after the invalid.
The sick woman still tossed and moaned; but she had been made so much more comfortable, that some at least of her suffering had been lessened, whilst the water which Nell let her have in copious draughts, seemed to refresh and cool her.
Before he went to his bed in the loft, the man came softly into the sick-room, having left his boots at the door.
“How are you feeling now, aunt?” he asked, bending over the flushed face on the pillow with lumbering tenderness.
She only muttered an incoherent something in reply, and moved her head restlessly, as if it worried her to have him hanging over the bed.
“Don’t you know me, aunt—not know Giles?” the poor fellow asked in a shocked tone, unconsciously raising his voice.
The sick woman only moaned and muttered; but Nell thought it high time to interfere, and gently plucked at his sleeve.
“I wouldn’t worry her, if I were you. The quieter she is left the sooner the fever will drop.”
“She’s worse than she has been all along,” he said, in a shocked whisper. “She has always seemed to know me before.”
“Never mind. Go to bed now, and get a good sleep; perhaps she will have come to her senses in the morning,” Nell said cheerfully; and Giles went off with a drooping head, for he had a good heart, and was warmly attached to the sick woman who had been like a mother to him.
Left alone, Nell made her preparations for keeping watch all night; then, going into the sick-room, wrapped herself in a big shawl which she had found lying on a chair, and gave herself up to the luxury of thinking.
Events had marched so quickly, that, used as she was to a monotonous life, the sudden plunge into change and activity really bewildered her.
It all began with the coming of the exhausted stranger to the Lone House on the ridge, and Nell thought of the vigil she had kept through fear lest Doss Umpey should turn him adrift at dead of night, steal his money, or do him some other harm. Following this came the night she had spent alone with poor dying Pip, and had fallen asleep to find when she awoke that the poor dog was dead.
She thought of the letter she had found in her grandfather’s pocket, with its mysterious threat, and she wondered again, as she had done so many times previously, if Dick Bronson and R. D. Brunsen had any connection with each other.
It bothered her a great deal, that she could not return to the stranger the case with the dollar notes and the portrait. She felt like a thief, to be carrying so much money about which did not belong to her; yet, by some strange contrariness, it was at the same time a comfort to her, since all the while it was in her possession she could not be said to be utterly destitute.
Presently her thoughts wandered to Mrs. Gunnage, and she wondered drowsily whether the good woman’s nerves had as yet permitted her to climb the ladder, to inspect the property which she had been obliged to leave behind when she came away.
Suddenly something different in the room struck Nell, causing her to be instantly on the alert. The moaning and muttering of the sick woman had ceased, and, bending over the bed, she found that the sufferer was lying peacefully asleep.
CHAPTER VII
A New Vocation
DR. SHAW was not in exactly an amiable frame of mind that morning. To begin with, there was more sickness in the district than he could very well cope with single-handed, while the lack of good nursing for his numerous patients was telling on his temper to quite a serious extent.
He had just come from a house where a patient, recovering from a rather bad bout of the malarial fever, just then so prevalent in the district, had been treated by an over-indulgent mother to roast goose and apple-pie, with, of course, disastrous results.
The fever itself was a puzzle. Some had it very lightly, and soon recovered, being no worse for the attack. Others had it so heavily that it became a life-and-death struggle.
In some instances it seemed epidemic, for whole households would go down with it; but mostly the cases were isolated, and had no connection with each other. As the neighbourhood had always been so healthy, the fever outbreak was all the more puzzling, and the overworked doctor had irritably decided to put it down to the weather, which had been unusually damp and hot through the latter part of the summer.
His practice lay on both sides of the frontier, and having looked after his Canadian patients, he crossed the border, plunging into the wild forest land that stretched for so many miles along the American side of the boundary.
Little oases of civilization were dotted here and there in the timbered wilderness, and it was to one of these lonely clearings that he turned his horse’s head.
“A fine old journey for us both, Dobbin, and only to find a dead woman at the end,” he said, in a grumpy tone, as his horse dropped into a walk to climb the shoulder of a mountain spur.
But Dobbin only shook an impatient head, for the flies were troublesome, and appeared in no way worried about the state of a patient more or less.
Dr. Shaw was always angry when his patients died, and his meek little wife had declared that he was quite dreadful to live with when, the previous week, both of Abe Lorimer’s sick sons had slipped out of life one after the other.
“Whew, but it is hot this morning!” he exclaimed, mopping his face with a big red handkerchief, which would have shocked a city practitioner.
Dobbin’s glossy coat was dripping with perspiration when at length the end of the journey was reached, at the very same gate where Nell’s tired feet had halted on the previous afternoon.
“Why, the blinds are not down!” exclaimed the doctor, in an amazed tone, as he rode in through the gate and saw the two front windows of the house both open. The door was open too—a barrier made of an ironing-board and two chairs serving to keep out pigs, ducks, and similar intruders.
He was so struck by failing to find the signs of sorrow which he had expected, that he sat still in his saddle staring at the house, until Nell, who had heard his approach, came hurrying out to greet him.
The blue merino dress had been laid aside to-day for the sake of coolness, and Nell appeared in a pink cotton skirt with a washed-out holland blouse, which had short sleeves and no collar.
“A woman here!” exclaimed the doctor, staring at Nell as if he had never seen anything like her before. “Pray, where did you spring from?”
“I came yesterday afternoon,” Nell answered, colouring vividly, her eyes dropping before his steady gaze in an embarrassed fashion.
“Well, you came just right. How is Mrs. Munson?” he asked, descending from his horse, which stood with a drooping head.
“You