Arctic regions -- Discovery and exploration -- Fiction; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction
Campbell, yielding to a certain feeling of uneasiness that Lloyd should
stand on the curb while he remained seated, got out of the carriage and
stood at her side, gravely listening to the talk between the nurse and
her one-time patient. Lloyd was obliged to explain, turning now to
Hattie, now to her father. She told them that she was in something of a
hurry. She had just been specially called to take a very bad case of
typhoid fever in a little suburb of the City, called Medford. It was not
her turn to go, but the physicians in charge of the case, as sometimes
happened, had asked especially for her.
"One of our people, a young woman named Miss Wakeley, has been on this
case," she continued, "but it seems she has allowed herself to contract
the disease herself. She went to the hospital this noon."
Campbell, his gravity suddenly broken up, exclaimed:
"Surely, Miss Searight, this is not the same case I read of in
yesterday's paper--it must be, too--Medford was the name of the place.
That case has killed one nurse already, and now the second one is down.
Don't tell me you are going to take the same case."
"It is the same case," answered Lloyd, "and, of course, I am going to
take it. Did you ever hear of a nurse doing otherwise? Why, it would
seem--seem so--funny--"
There was no dissuading her, and Campbell and Hattie soon ceased even to
try. She was impatient to be gone. The station was close at hand, and
she would not hear of taking the carriage thither. However, before she
left them she recurred again to the subject of her letter to Mr.
Campbell, and then and there it was decided that Hattie and her maid
should spend the following ten days at Lloyd's place in Bannister. The
still country air, now that Hattie was able to take the short journey,
would be more to her than many medicines, and the ponies and Lloyd's
phaeton would be left there with Lewis for her use.
"And write often, won't you, Miss Searight?" exclaimed Hattie as Lloyd
was saying good-bye. Lloyd shook her head.
"Not that of all things," she answered. "If I did that we might have
you, too, down with typhoid. But you may write to me, and I hope you
will," and she gave Hattie her new address.
"Harriet," said Campbell as the carriage drove back across the square,
the father and daughter waving their hands to Lloyd, briskly on her way
to the railroad station, "Harriet."
"Yes, papa."
"There goes a noble woman. Pluck, intelligence, strong will--she has
them all--and a great big heart that--heart that--" He clipped the end
of a cigar thoughtfully and fell silent.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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