At this moment Mrs. Dodd coming hastily into the room, he looked steadily at her, and said, “Lucy!”
She ran to throw her arms round him, but Sampson interfered. “Gently! gently!” said he; “we must have no violent emotions.”
“Oh, no! I will be prudent.” And she stood quiet with her arms still extended, and cried for joy.
They got David to bed again, anti Sampson told Mrs. Dodd there was no danger now from the malady, but only from the remedies.
And in fact David fell into a state of weakness and exhaustion, and kept muttering unintelligibly.
Dr. Short called in the morning, and was invited to consult with Dr. Sampson. He declined. “Dr. Sampson is a notorious quack: no physician of any eminence will meet him in consultation.”
“I regret that resolution,” said Mrs. Dodd quietly, “as it will deprive me of the advantage of your skill.”
Dr. Short bowed stifly. “I shall be at your service, madam, when that empiric has given the patient up.” And he drove away.
Osmond, finding Sampson installed, took the politic line; he contrived to glide by fine gradations into the empiric's opinions, without recanting his own, which were diametrically opposed.
Sampson, before he shot back to town, asked him to provide a good reliable nurse.
He sent a young woman of iron. She received Sampson's instructions, and assumed the command of the sick-room, and was jealous of Mrs. Dodd and Julia, looked on them as mere rival nurses, amateurs, who, if not snubbed, might ruin the professionals. She seemed to have forgotten in the hospitals all about the family affections and their power of turning invalids themselves into nurses.
The second night she got the patient all to herself for four hours, from eleven till two.
The ladies having consented to this arrangement its order to recruit themselves for the work they were not so mad as to intrust wholly to a hireling, nurse's feathers smoothed themselves perceptibly.
At twelve the patient was muttering and murmuring incessantly about wrecks, and money, and things: of which vain babble nurse showed her professional contempt by nodding.
At 1.20 she snored very loud, and woke instantly at the sound.
She took the thief out of the candle, and went like a good sentinel to look at her charge.