“Lord Harry! what am I to do, with fever in the house, and Giles gone and Miss Frye no more good than a setting hen, and I, who was never sick a day in my life worse than Mrs. Frye,” Colin thought, as he stood looking at Rex, who seemed in a heavy sleep, although he kept muttering about the well, and the broken glass, and the letter, and the sick brother, and Claremont, and the will, which he said he was going to contest and break. “Confound that will! It’s bothering him to death,” Colin thought, “and will until the thing is decided. I wonder if he posted the letter he was writing. If so that will settle it. Rex,” he said, screaming as if the fever-tossed man, whose eyes were now wide open and staring at him, were deaf as a stone. “Have you sent the letter to Irene, you know?” For a moment Rex looked at him as if in doubt of his meaning; then, as the past came back to him, he answered briskly, “Oh, yes, the letter you helped me write, with something about her pulse beating in unison with mine. I didn’t put that in, but I wrote the letter. It’s all right;” then he dozed off again and Colin did not dream that the letter was still in Rex’s pocket where he had put it when he started to see Rena and ask Irene’s address. It was on its way to New York, or soon would be, Colin thought, and felt relieved on that score. If Rex should get very sick it might, perhaps, be proper to send for Irene, and what was it the doctor said about a trained nurse? and where was he to get one? For a man strong as he was in some respects, he was weak and helpless in others. The household matters he left mostly with his housekeeper, Mrs. Frye, and as he was never sick himself, he had but little idea what he ought to do for Rex, who, now that he was in bed, had let go of himself and given up to the disease making rapid inroads upon him. Suddenly it occurred to Colin that Mrs. Parks would know what to do and where he could find a nurse. She knew everything and kept hold of everybody’s business. It would be some comfort to talk with her anyway, he thought, and just as we were sitting down to tea he appeared at the front door, on the brass knocker of which he made thunderous raps as if he were in a hurry. “For land’s sake!” Mrs. Parks exclaimed, almost dropping the teapot in her surprise. “Go, Charlotte Ann, and see who is there and what he wants.”