Three days more. In the third evening I found the doctor saying to Mrs.
Fontenette:
"Nine o'clock. It's now seven-thirty. Well, you'd better begin pretty soon
to watch for the change.
"O, you'll know it when you see it, it will be as plain as something
sinking in water right before your eyes. Then give him the beef-tea, just
a teaspoonful; then, by and by, another, and another, as I told you,
always keeping his head on the pillow--mind that."
Out beside his carriage he continued to me: "O yes, a nurse or patient may
break that rule, or almost any rule, and the patient may live. I had a
patient, left alone for a moment on the climacteric day, who was found
standing at her mirror combing her hair, and to-day she's as well as you
or I. I had another who got out of bed, walked down a corridor, fell face
downward and lay insensible at the crack of a doorsill with the rain
blowing in on him under the door--and he got well. As to Fontenette, all
his symptoms so far are good. Well--I'll be back in the morning."
So ran the time. There were no more new cases in our house; Mrs. Smith and
I had had the scourge years before, as also had Senda, who remained over
the way. Fontenette passed from one typical phase of the disorder to
another "charmingly" as the doctor said, yet he specially needed just such
exceptionally delicate care as his wife was giving him. In the city at
large the deaths per day were more and more, and one night when it
showered and there was a heavenly cooling of the air, the increase in the
mortality was horrible. But the weather, as a rule, was steady and
tropically splendid; the sun blazed; the moonlight was marvellous; the
dews were like rains; the gardens were gay with butterflies. Our
convalescent little ones hourly forgot how gravely far they were from
being well, and it became one of our heavy cares to keep the entomologist
from entomologizing--and from overeating.
From time to time, when shorthanded we had used skilled nurses; but when
Mrs. Fontenette grew haggard and we mentioned them, she said
distressfully: "O! no hireling hands! I can't bear the thought of it!" and
indeed the thought of the average hired "fever-nurse" of those days was
not inspiring; so I served as her alternate when she would accept any and
throw herself on the couch Senda had spread in the little parlor.