Red Pepper's Patients: With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in ParticularRichmond, Grace S. (Grace Smith)
General
Red Pepper's Patients: With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular
Richmond, Grace S. (Grace Smith)
Physicians -- Fiction
Ellen stood looking at the pair--her brawny husband, himself "completely
done" an hour before, now sitting on the edge of the couch with his new
patient's hand in his, his face wearing an expression of keen interest,
not a sign of fatigue in his manner; the exhausted young foreigner in
his ragged clothing lying on the luxurious couch, his pale face standing
out like a fine cameo against the blue velvet of the pillow under his
dark head. If a thought of possible contamination for her home's
belongings entered her mind it found no lodgment there, so pitiful was
her heart.
"Is the room ready upstairs?" Burns asked presently, when he had again
noted the feeble action of the pulse under his fingers. "What he needs
is rest and sleep, and plenty of both. Like the most of us he's kept up
while he had to, and now he's gone to pieces absolutely. To-morrow we
can send him to the hospital, perhaps, but for to-night--"
"The room is ready. I sent Cynthia up at once."
"Bless you, you never fail me, do you? Well--we may as well be on our
way. He's nearly asleep now."
Burns stood up, throwing off his coat. But Ellen remonstrated.
"Dear, you are so tired to-night. Let me call Jim over to help you carry
him up."
A derisive laugh answered her. "Great Caesar, Len! The chap's a mere bag
of bones--and if he were twice as heavy he'd be no weight for me. Jim
Macauley would howl at the idea, and no wonder. Go ahead and open the
doors, please, and I'll have him up in a jiffy."
He stooped over the couch, swung the slender figure up into his powerful
arms, speaking reassuringly to the eyes which slowly opened in
half-stupefied alarm. "It's all right, little Hungary. We're going to
put you to bed, like the small lost boy you are. Bring his fiddle,
Len--he won't want that out of his sight."
He strode away with his burden, and marched up the stairs as if he were
carrying his own two-year-old son. Arrived in the small, comfortable
little room at the back of the house he laid his charge on the bed, and
stood looking down at him.
"Len, I'll have to go the whole figure," he said--and said it not as if
the task he was about to impose upon himself were one that irked him.
"Get me hot water and soap and towels, will you? And an old pair of
pajamas. I can't put him to bed in his rags."
"Shall I send for Amy?" questioned his wife, quite as if she understood
the uselessness of remonstrance.
"Not much. Amy's making out bills for me to-night, we'll not interrupt
the good work. Put some bath-ammonia in the water, please--and have it
hot."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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