The weeks that followed were the most terrible and most wearing that Jeannie had ever known. During the first day or two she showed a real aptitude for her work; she was gentle, firm, and untiring, and as the epidemic increased Miss Fortescue was soon moved to help in a larger ward, and a dozen cases in a smaller ward, off the one under Nurse James, were put under Jeannie. The head nurse was thus always at hand in case she wanted her, but otherwise Jeannie had to manage her patients alone. It was a constant matter of anxiety to Jeannie as to whether she ought or ought not to summon the other. At first the slightest rise in a patient’s temperature seemed to her enough grounds on which to ask the inspection of the elder woman, for she had been told she could not be too careful. Nurse James herself was worked almost to death; and on Jeannie’s calling her one day[229] to look at a patient she had exclaimed, snappishly:

“It would be less trouble to look after them myself.”

Jeannie flushed slightly, but said nothing, and went back to her work. Nurse James hurried out of the room, but returned a moment later.

“You must forgive me, Miss Avesham,” she said, “but I am worried to death. What we should do without you and Miss Fortescue I don’t know. But the temperature always goes up a little in the afternoon; it is only the very sudden rise or sudden falls, particularly the latter, which need alarm you.”

Jeannie smiled.

“I see; I will try to remember,” she said. “You are very patient with me.”

The work was terribly severe to any one unaccustomed to it. In her ward were women and girls only, who were easier to manage than the men, but who were more hopeless and apathetic, and Jeannie often thought that she would sooner have them fretful and irritable if they only would be less despond[230]ent. One woman, who was having the attack very slightly, and getting through with it very well, would spend half the day in sulky tears, pitying herself, and moaning over the cruelty of Jeannie, who, in obedience to her orders, did not, of course, let her have a crumb of any solid food. Sometimes when she was giving her a wash in the morning she would be called away by another trying to raise herself in bed or wanting to be attended to in some way, and when she came back there would be nothing but querulous complaints of the time she had been left; she felt sure she would catch a cold; Jeannie had not dried her properly before she went. At another time she would beg for food with tears, saying how she had read a story in which was described an epidemic of typhoid, where a charitable lady in the village had sat by her patients and fed them with cooling fruits. Jeannie had laughed at this, out of the superiority of her ten days’ knowledge.

“My good woman,” she said, “if I wanted to kill you I should give you a cooling fruit.[231]”

“You are killing me with starvation,” cried the woman. “Look how thin I have grown with a fortnight of this. Oh, for God’s sake, Miss, give me just a crust of bread!”

Jeannie had finished washing her, and covered her up gently.

“Now I am leaving you, and I shall come again to you in two hours with your milk,” she said. “Look, you have two hours before you. Just say your prayers, and thank God for getting over this. And ask Him to make you more sensible and more patient. You are more trouble than all the rest of the ward put together.”

Jeannie took down the woman’s temperature-chart, which hung over her bed, and put down the ten o’clock register.

“You are doing very well,” she said. “Just think over what I have said.”

The next case was as bad as a case can be. It was a girl not more than sixteen years old, and even now, when the second week of the fever was only just beginning, her strength was terribly exhausted by the continued high fever. The afternoon before Jeannie had spent two hours sponging her[232] with iced water, and had only succeeded in bringing it down to 102°. She came on duty herself at eight in the morning, and as she put the thermometer into the child’s mouth she looked at the temperature-chart. It had been 102° again at six in the morning, when it should have been lowest, and she looked anxiously at the face. It was very wan and thin, and the skin looked hard and tight as if it had been stretched. Below the eyes were deep hollows, and though they were wide open it was clear that the girl was scarcely conscious. She waited a full half minute, and then drew the thermometer gently out of her mouth and looked at it. It registered only 98°. She frowned and put it into her mouth again, hoping there might have been some mistake. Then when she saw it a second time she hurried into the next ward.

“That girl, Number 8,” she said to Nurse James, “had a six-o’clock temperature of 102°. It has sunk to 98°.”

Nurse James hardly looked up; she was watching a man who lay quite still, but tried every other moment to get up in bed.

“Dr. Maitland is in the next ward,” she[233] said; “go and tell him at once. It may be perforation. Then, when you have finished your round, if all the rest are doing well, I wish you would come here while I finish. I can’t leave this man alone. You can hear any sound in your ward from his bed.”

Jeannie hurried on and told Dr. Maitland. He came at once, looked at the girl, and shook his head.

“You did quite right to send for me, Miss Avesham,” he said. “Yes, she is as bad as she can be. I can do nothing.”

At moments like these Jeannie felt sick and utterly helpless, and almost inclined to say that she could bear it no longer. But she said nothing, and went on to the next bed.

The next patient was a robust woman of about thirty with a baritone voice. She proclaimed loudly that she was perfectly well, and was being starved. Her gray Irish eyes used to plead with Jeannie for something to eat, and she badly resented being washed. But this morning she took it in silence, and thanked Jeannie.

“She’s bad?” she asked, looking hard to the next bed.[234]

“Yes, very bad,” said Jeannie, hardly able to speak. She took the woman’s chart down from the wall and indicated the ten-o’clock temperature on it.

“You’re nearly through, I hope,” she said. “Yes, quite normal this morning. Now all you have to do is to lie very quiet, and you will get stronger every day. The doctor said you might have beef-tea this morning instead of milk.”

She smiled at her rather sadly, and was passing on, but the woman seized her hand.

“It’s cruel hard on ye,” said she; “but don’t mind so, don’t mind so. An’ me worrying you and all. I’ll bite out me tongue before I say another hasty word to ye.”

Then came two or three very bad cases. One was a frail, tired-looking woman, who glanced at Jeannie wistfully as she examined the thermometer.

“I’m no better?” she asked.

Jeannie smiled, but with a heavy heart. The woman, she felt sure, could not last through very many days of this.

“How do you feel?” she said.[235]

“Weak and tired—oh, so tired! And I have a pain in my back.”

“Do you cough at all?” asked Jeannie.

“I couldn’t sleep for it last night,” said the woman, “and that makes a body weary.”

“Keep yourself warm, then,” she said, “and lie still.”

“But I’m no better?” she asked again.

“That was one of the questions which we settled not to ask,” said Jeannie. “When you are quite well you will get up. Till then, nothing, nothing.”

Half an hour more sufficed to finish the round, and she went into the next ward to watch the man who was so restless. For nearly an hour she had to sit close by his bedside, with her hands continually pressing on his shoulders to prevent his getting up. He was more than half unconscious and wandering in his talk, saying things now and then which ten days ago would have made Jeannie turn from him in horror and disgust. But now she had nothing of that left, only pure pity and the one great end in view to let none of these poor people die.

Then when Nurse James had finished her[236] round she came back to her, and by then it was time to get the patients’ food. Some of the more advanced and progressing cases were already allowed Mellin’s Food, but for the most it was still only milk and beef-tea.

At mid-day she had a couple of hours’ interval, usually returned home to lunch, and went afterward for a walk. But to-day she felt too fagged and too sick at heart to do more than sit in the garden and beneath the pitiless leaden cowl of the sky. The effort of appearing cheerful and remaining cheering was too great, and when alone she abandoned herself to a sort of resigned hopelessness. Just before leaving the ward she had seen the terrible screen put up round the bed of the girl who was dying. That was all the privacy that could be given her. She almost hoped that when she got back the end would have come; only two days before she had sat in the still and awe-struck ward while a woman passed through her last hours. She had heard the wandering, inarticulate cries; she had counted her breaths through the long, pitiless silences; she had shut her teeth hard to bear, without screaming audibly, that one[237] last exclamation in which the spirit clutches with unavailing hands not to be torn away from the inert body, the one last convulsive breath in which the body tries to retain it, and she thought she could hardly bear it again. Then she cudgelled and contemned herself for her paltry, selfish cowardice. Was there ever, she thought, a girl so puny-spirited?

During these ten days in which she had been nursing the epidemic had showed no signs of abatement. Sometimes for a couple of days the return of the fresh cases was suddenly diminished, and once when Jeannie went to the hospital at eight in the morning to take up her duties they told her that there had been no fresh cases reported since the night before. But on all these occasions the lull was only temp............