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Page 39
On the morning after her arrival and as she was unpacking her trunk Miss
Douglass came into her room and seated herself, according to her custom,
on the couch. After some half-hour's give-and-take talk, the fever nurse
said:
"Do you remember, Lloyd, what I told you about typhoid in the
spring--that it was almost epidemic?"
Lloyd nodded, turning about from her trunk, her arms full of dresses.
"It's worse than ever now," continued Miss Douglass; "three of our
people have been on cases only in the short time you have been away. And
there's a case out in Medford that has killed one nurse."
"Well!" exclaimed Lloyd in some astonishment, "it seems to me that one
should confine typhoid easily enough."
"Not always, not always," answered the other; "a virulent case would be
quite as bad as yellow fever or smallpox. You remember when we were at
the hospital Miss Helmuth, that little Polish nurse, contracted it from
her case and died even before her patient did. Then there was Eva
Blayne. She very nearly died. I did like the way Miss Wakeley took this
case out at Medford even when the other nurse had died. She never
hesitated for--"
"Has one of our people got this case?" inquired Lloyd.
"Of course. Didn't I tell you?"
"I hope we cure it," said Lloyd, her trunk-tray in her hands. "I don't
think we have ever lost a case yet when good nursing could pull it
through, and in typhoid the whole treatment really is the nursing."
"Lloyd," said Miss Douglass decisively, "I would give anything I can
think of now to have been on that hip disease case of yours and have
brought my patient through as you did. You should hear what Dr. Street
says of you--and the little girl's father. By the way, I had nearly
forgotten. Hattie Campbell--that's her name, isn't it?--telephoned to
know if you had come back from the country yet. That was yesterday. I
said we expected you to-day, and she told me to say she was coming to
see you."
The next afternoon toward three o'clock Hattie and her father drove to
the square in an open carriage, Hattie carrying a great bunch of violets
for Lloyd. The little invalid was well on the way to complete recovery
by now. Sometimes she was allowed to walk a little, but as often as not
her maid wheeled her about in an invalid's chair. She drove out in the
carriage frequently by way of exercise. She would, no doubt, always limp
a little, but in the end it was certain she would be sound and strong.
For Hattie and her father Lloyd had become a sort of tutelary
semi-deity. In what was left of the family she had her place, hardly
less revered than even the dead wife. Campbell himself, who had made a
fortune in Bessemer steel, a well-looking, well-groomed gentleman,
smooth-shaven and with hair that was none too gray, more than once
caught himself standing before Lloyd's picture that stood on the
mantelpiece in Hattie's room, looking at it vaguely as he clipped the
nib from his cigar.
But on this occasion as the carriage stopped in front of the ample pile
of the house Hattie called out, "Oh, there she is now," and Lloyd came
down the steps, carrying her nurse's bag in her hand.
"Are we too late?" began Hattie; "are you going out; are you on a case?
Is that why you've got your bag? We thought you were on a vacation."
Campbell, yielding to a certain feeling of uneasiness that Lloyd should
stand on the curb while he remained seated, got out of the carriage and
stood at her side, gravely listening to the talk between the nurse and
her one-time patient. Lloyd was obliged to explain, turning now to
Hattie, now to her father. She told them that she was in something of a
hurry. She had just been specially called to take a very bad case of
typhoid fever in a little suburb of the City, called Medford. It was not
her turn to go, but the physicians in charge of the case, as sometimes
happened, had asked especially for her.
"One of our people, a young woman named Miss Wakeley, has been on this
case," she continued, "but it seems she has allowed herself to contract
the disease herself. She went to the hospital this noon."
Campbell, his gravity suddenly broken up, exclaimed:
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