Part 10 (1/2)

”I should like you to wait until things are asked for, and not to worry me,” retorted Sarah Anne.

Ethel sighed. Not for the temper: Sarah Anne was always fractious in illness: but for the suffering she thought she saw, and the half doubt, half dread, which had arisen within her. ”I think I had better call mamma,” she deliberated to herself. ”Though, if she sees nothing unusually the matter with Sarah Anne, she will only be angry with me.”

Proceeding to her mother's chamber, Ethel knocked softly. Lady Sarah slept still, but the entrance aroused her.

”Mamma, I do not like to disturb you; I was unwilling to do so: but Sarah Anne is ill.”

”Ill again! And only last week she was in bed three days! Poor dear sufferer! Is it her chest again?”

”Mamma, she seems _unusually_ ill. Otherwise I should not have disturbed you. I feared--I thought--you will be angry with me if I say, perhaps?”

”Say what? Don't stand like a statue, Ethel.”

Ethel dropped her voice. ”Dear mamma, suppose it should be the fever?”

For one startling moment, Lady Sarah felt as if a dagger had pierced her: the next, she turned upon Ethel. Fever for Sarah Anne! how dared she prophesy it? A low, common fever, confined to the poor of the town, and which had subsided; or, all but subsided! Was it likely to return again and come up here to attack her darling child? What did Ethel mean by it?

Ethel, the tears in her eyes, said she hoped it would prove to be only an ordinary headache; it was her love for Sarah Anne which awoke her fears. Lady Sarah proceeded to the sick-room; and Ethel followed. Her ladys.h.i.+p was not in the habit of observing caution, and spoke freely of the ”fever” before Sarah Anne; apparently for the purpose of casting blame at Ethel.

Sarah Anne did not imbibe the fear; she ridiculed Ethel as her mother had done. For some hours Lady Sarah did not admit it either. She would have summoned medical advice at first, but that Sarah Anne, in her peevishness, protested she would not have a doctor. Later on she grew worse, and Mr. Snow was sent for. You saw him in his gig hastening to the house.

Lady Sarah came forward to receive him; Ethel, full of anxiety, near her. She was a thin woman, with a shrivelled face and a sharp red nose, her grey hair banded plainly under a close white net cap.

She grasped Mr. Snow's arm. ”You must save my child!”

”Higher aid permitting me,” the surgeon answered. ”Why do you a.s.sume it to be fever? For the last six weeks I have been summoned by timid parents to a score of 'fever' cases; and when I have arrived in hot haste, they have turned out to be no fever at all.”

”_This_ is the fever,” replied Lady Sarah. ”Had I been more willing to admit that it was, you would have been sent for hours ago. It was Ethel's fault. She suggested at daylight that it might be fever; and it made my darling girl so angry that she forbid my sending for advice. But she is worse now. Come and see her.”

Mr. Snow laid his hand upon Ethel's head with a fond gesture, ere he turned to Lady Sarah. All Prior's Ash loved Ethel Grame.

Tossing upon her uneasy bed, her face flushed, her hair floating untidily about it, lay Sarah Anne, s.h.i.+vering still. The doctor gave one glance at her: it was quite enough to satisfy him that Lady Sarah was not mistaken.

”Is it the fever?” impatiently asked Sarah Anne, unclosing her hot eyelids.

”If it is, we must drive it away again,” said the doctor cheerily.

”Why should the fever have come to _me_?” she rejoined, her tone rebellious.

”Why was I thrown from my horse last year, and broke my arm?” returned Mr. Snow. ”These things come to all of us.”

”To break an arm is nothing--people always recover from that,” irritably answered Sarah Anne.

”And you will recover from the fever, if you will be quiet and reasonable.”

”I am so hot! My head is so heavy!”

Mr. Snow, who had called for water and a gla.s.s, was mixing a white powder which he had produced from his pocket. She took it without opposition, and then he lessened the weight of bed-clothes, and afterwards turned his attention to the chamber. It was close and hot; the sun, which had just burst forth brightly from the grey skies, shone full upon it.

”You have that chimney stuffed up!” he exclaimed.