CHAPTER V

TELEPHONES AND TENTS

“Hello, Jarve!  This you?”

Over the telephone Jarvis Burnside recognized Max Lane’s voice, eager and cheerful.  The last time he had heard it, it had been so despondent that his own anxiety had been heavily increased.  He answered eagerly: 

“Yes.  What is it?”

“There’s a break in her temperature.”

“A break!  You mean—­”

“A drop—­a landslide—­during the last twelve hours.  She’s sleeping quietly.  She’s—­”

But something suddenly interfered with the speaker’s articulation.  Although Jarvis continued to listen with strained attention, a silence succeeded.  His imagination filled the gap.  He essayed to offer congratulations, but found something the matter with his own powers of speech.  After a moment’s struggle, however, he was able to say, “I’ll be round as quick as I can get there.”

Mrs. Burnside, passing the telephone closet at the back of the hall, heard a rush therefrom, and found herself suddenly embraced by a pair of long arms.  Although blue goggles concealed her son’s eyes from her look of sympathetic inquiry, the smile which transformed his face was not to be mistaken.

“Jarvis, dear—­you’ve had good news!”

“Max couldn’t say much, but his voice told.  The fever’s down—­she’s sleeping!”

“Oh, I am glad—­so glad!  The dear child!  I couldn’t sleep last night, after the discouraging news.”

Her son did not say that he had not slept, but he looked it.  His finely cut features showed plainly that for more than one night he had been suffering severe and increasing strain.

“We must tell Josephine,” said his mother happily, proceeding on her way with Jarvis’s arm about her shoulders.

“You look her up, please.  I’m going to bolt down to see Max and the rest.  Uncle Timothy was about all in last night when I met him.  These last five days—­”

Jarvis released his mother, seized his hat from a tree they were passing, and escaped out of a side door.  Mrs. Burnside hurried away upstairs to find her daughter.  If the Burnside family had been bound to the Lanes by ties of blood, each member of it could hardly have been more intimately concerned with the issue of Sally’s illness.

Away down town, at the Winona flats, Jarvis’s ring brought an instant response, and a minute later Bob was shaking his hand off at the half-way landing.  Then Alec was rushing to the top of the stairs, and Max was shouting from the bath-room, where he was shaving.  Uncle Timothy alone remained quiet in his chair, but his worn face was bright.

“It’s great news, Mr. Rudd, great news!” cried Jarvis, wringing Uncle Timothy’s out-stretched hand of welcome.

“Yes, Jarvis—­yes.  But—­I must warn you all to make haste slowly in the matter of assurance.  It looks favourable, certainly, but the child has been through a hard fight, and she is not out of danger yet.  You know I don’t want to dampen your happiness, boys—­” and Uncle Timothy looked tenderly from one face to another, out of the wisdom of his greater experience.