The last days of May were over, and June was here, but since the visit of the dowser there had fallen no drop of rain. The fever was in no-ways abated. There had been several more deaths and several new cases; another young Chapman was down with it; the isolation hospital was full, and a fierce battle was going on among the guardians as to the expediency of admitting sick people into the Union Infirmary.
In the meantime, by a subscription raised by the well-to-do in the parish, the services of a trained nurse had been secured, and old Jimmy had been asked to give her a lodging. Everybody knew how clean and neat Milly kept everything, and it was unanimously agreed at the meeting, which had been hastily summoned, that the nurse would be as comfortable there as anywhere else in the village.
Old Jimmy at first demurred, on account his granddaughter; but Milly herself soon argued him out of his objections.
"The fever is in the air, grandfather," she said. "I take all ordinary precautions against it. I boil and filter every drop of water we drink, and I never let anything dirty lie about anywhere, and am as particular as can be about every morsel of food we eat, and I don't see as I can do no more. If I'm to catch it I shall, but not from the nurse, I know, unless she takes it herself; for this typhoid is not like scarlet fever or smallpox--you can't carry it about in your clothes, but only take it immediate one from another. I'm not afraid of the nurse if you're not."
So Jimmy gave in, and one hot evening the nurse arrived. Mrs. Crowe, the vicar's housekeeper, met her at the station, and brought her to her new quarters. The white dust lay thick on the road, and the hedges all along were choked with it. A porter from the station followed with her box on a barrow. A most formidable box it was. It quite frightened Milly when she saw it. She thought she must be having a very grand lady to stay with her. But the nurse soon explained that it was simply filled with linen.
"I've brought enough to last me a month or two," she said, "and my aprons weigh so heavy; but if we can't get it up your stairs, why, we can just unpack it in the parlour and carry the things up in our arms. You need not worry about that."