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Updated: June 21, 2025
"I wish I hadn't dinnered him as I have been doin'!" the woman broke out. "But he'll know the difference next week! And now, sir, I suppose you'll be goin' to that place again to-night?" Anne jerked her thumb behind her over her left shoulder. "Suppose so, Anne. Can't afford a night-nurse, and the wife won't look after him." "Why don't some one make her?" said Anne, frowning.
In the earlier hours of the night, after the nurses had been changed, and Mary had gone to bed exhausted with stair-climbing, and Lily Holl was recounting the day to Dick up at the grocer's, and the day-nurse was already asleep, and the night-nurse had arranged the night, then, in the faintly-lit silence of the chamber, Constance would argue with herself for an hour at a time.
"I can look after him, sir," said Griffiths at once. "Oh, very well." He wrote a prescription, gave instructions, and left. "Now you've got to do exactly as I tell you," said Griffiths. "I'm day-nurse and night-nurse all in one." "It's very kind of you, but I shan't want anything," said Philip. Griffiths put his hand on Philip's forehead, a large cool, dry hand, and the touch seemed to him good.
She died in the night, alone with the night-nurse. By a curious chance the Wesleyan minister, hearing that she was seriously ill, had called on the previous day. She had not asked for him; and this pastoral visit, from a man who had always said that the heavy duties of the circuit rendered pastoral visits almost impossible, made her think.
On a bare table in the centre, laden with bottles and various surgical necessaries, stood a shaded lamp, and beside it the chair where the night-nurse had been sitting. In the beds were sleeping children of various ages, some burrowing, face downward, animal-like, into their pillows; others lying on their backs, painfully straight and still.
She had worked herself into a state of tense nerves. Yet why? Was it possible she was as fond of the old man as the night-nurse believed? Esther could hardly credit that. To begin with there was that conversation at the tea-table, which made it impossible to think that the Frenchwoman loved her husband, at least enough to upset herself as she was doing now. What then could be the reason?
If she had, then so had the night-nurse, who only last evening had remarked to her how well the old man was going on. Yet she was impressed by the doctor's ability to discern things hidden from her eyes. Perhaps all along he had regarded it as a losing fight. "Now then, nurse, help me to get Sir Charles over on his left side."
She very frequently said so, and sometimes to his face, although she never neglected him for an instant. In truth, she shared with Mrs. Bingle the day nursing, and seldom slept well of nights, knowing that the night-nurse was upsetting everything in the kitchen and pantry in her most professional way. Of course Uncle Joe did not actually get well. He merely recovered.
The times were many because, though she knew it not, he had come to be, in effect, a night-nurse to the little bent man below, who was now living out his days in quiet desperation, and his nights in a fear of something behind him. Some nights Follett would have unbroken rest; but oftener he was awakened by the other's grip on his arm.
When Harding returned to the bank the next morning, he presented such a careworn appearance that Wallace was genuinely concerned. "Hullo," he exclaimed, "you look as if you had had enough of acting night-nurse to wounded men. It has been too much for you, my lad." "It has been an anxious night," Harding replied. "At first both were fairly well, but towards morning old Mr. Dudgeon became very bad.
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