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“Pathetic,” he called the fevered satisfaction she took in the hovering attentions of our old black nurse, who gave us brief respites in the two sick-rooms by turns, and who had according to Mrs. Fontenette, “such a beautiful faith!” The doctor thought it mostly words, among which “de Lawd willin'” so constantly recurred that out of the sick-room he always alluded to her as D.V., though never without a certain sincere regard. This kind old soul had nursed much yellow fever in her time, and it did not occur to us that maybe her time was past.

When Mrs. Fontenette had been ill something over a week, the doctor one evening made us glad by saying as he came through the little dining-room and jerked a thumb back toward Fontenette’s door, “Just keep him as he is for one more night and, I promise you, he’ll get well; but!”–He sat down on the couch–Senda’s–in the parlor, and pointed at the door to Mrs. Fontenette’s room–“You’ve got to be careful how you let even that be known–in there! She can get well too–if–” And he went on to tell how in this ailment all the tissues of the body sink into such frail deterioration, that so slight a thing as the undue thrill of an emotion, may rend some inner part of the soul’s house and make it hopelessly untenable.

“Iss sat not se condition vhat make it so easy to relapse?” asked Senda.

He said it was, I think, and went his way, little knowing to what a night he was leaving us–except for its celestial beauty, upon which he expatiated as I stepped with him to the gate.

XVIII

He had not been gone long enough for me to get back into the house- Fonteette’s–when I espied coming to me, in piteous haste from her home around the corner, the young daughter of another neighbor. Her hair was about her eyes and as she saw the physician had gone, she wrung her hands and burst into violent weeping. I ran to her outside the gate, pointing backward at Mrs. Fontenette’s room, with entreating signs for quiet as she called–“Oh, where is he gone? Which way did he go?”

“I can’t tell you, my dear girl!” I murmured. “I don’t know! What is the trouble?”

“My father!” she hoarsely whispered.

“My father’s dying! dying in a raging delirium, and we can’t hold him in bed! O, come and help us!” She threw her hands above her head in wild despair, and gnawed her fingers and lips and shook and writhed as she gulped down her sobs, and laid hold of me and begged as though I had refused.

I found her words true. It took four men to keep him down. I did not have to stay to the end, and when I reached Fontenette’s side again, was glad to find I had been away but little over an hour.

I sent the old black woman home and to bed, and may have sat an hour more, when she came back to tell us, that one of the children was very wakeful and feverish. Senda went to see into the matter for us, and the old woman took her place in the little parlor. Mrs. Smith was with Mrs. Fontenette.

Fontenette slept. Loath to see him open his eyes, I kept very still, while nearly another hour dragged by, listening hard for Senda’s return, but hearing only, once or twice, through the narrow stairway and closets between the two bedrooms, a faint stir that showed Mrs. Fontenette was awake and being waited on.

I was grateful for the rarity of outdoor sounds; a few tree-frogs piped, two or three solitary wayfarers passed in the street; twice or more the sergeant of the night-watch trilled his whistle in a street or two behind us, and twice or more in front; and once, and once again, came the distant bellow of steamboats passing each other–not the famous boats whose whistle you would know one from another, for they were laid up. I doubt if I have forgotten any sound that I noticed that night. I remember the drowsy rumble of the midnight horse-car and tinkle of its mule’s bell, first in Prytania street and then in Magazine. It was just after these that at last a black hand beckoned me to the door, and under her breath the old nurse told me she was just back from our house, where her mistress had sent her, and that–“De-eh–de-eh”–