She saw that he was in a bate about himself, so after her tender beginnings, she became rough.  She made him sit up while she shook his pillows, then she made him lie flat and tucked the sheet round him strenuously; she scolded him for leaving his clothes lying about on the floor.  She felt as if her love for him was only just beginning—­the last four months seemed cold and formal compared with these moments of warm, personal service.  She brought him water for his hands, and scrubbed his face with a sponge to his intense discomfort.  She was bawling downstairs to the unlucky Raddish to put the kettle on for some herb tea—­since an intimate cross-examination revealed that he had not had the recommended dose—­when the doctor arrived and came upstairs with Sir Harry.

He undid a good deal of Joanna’s good work—­he ordered the blind to be let down again, and he refused to back her up in her injunctions to the patient to lie flat—­on the contrary he sent for more pillows, and Martin had to confess to feeling easier when he was propped up against them with a rug round his shoulders.  He then announced that he would send for a nurse from Rye.

“Oh, but I can manage,” cried Joanna—­“let me nurse him.  I can come and stop here, and nurse him day and night.”

“I am sure there is no one whom he’d rather have than you, Miss Godden,” said Dr. Taylor gallantly, “but of course you are not professional, and pneumonia wants thoroughly experienced nursing—­the nurse counts more than the doctor in a case like this.”

“Pneumonia!  Is that what’s the matter with him?”

They had left Martin’s room, and the three of them were standing in the hall.

“I’m afraid that’s it—­only in the right lung so far.”

“But you can stop it—­you won’t let him get worse.  Pneumonia!...”

The word was full of a sinister horror to her, suggesting suffocation—­agony.  And Martin’s chest had always been weak—­the weak part of his strong body.  She should have thought of that ... thought of it three nights ago when, all through her, he had been soaked with the wind-driven rain ... just like a drowned rat he had looked when they came to Ansdore, his cap dripping, the water running down his neck....  No, no, it could not be that—­he couldn’t have caught pneumonia just through getting wet that time—­she had got wet a dunnamany times and not been tuppence the worse ... his lungs were not weak in that way—­it was the London fogs that had disagreed with them, the doctor had said so, and had sent him away from town, to the Marsh and the rain....  He had been in London for the last two days, and the fog had got into his poor chest again,—­that was all, and now that he was home on the Marsh he would soon be well—­of course he would soon be well—­she was a fool to fret.  And now she would go upstairs and sit with him till the nurse came; it was her last chance of doing those little tender, rough, intimate things for him ... till they were married—­oh, she wouldn’t let him fling his clothes about like that when they were married!  Meantime she would go up, and see that he swallowed every drop of the herb tea—­that was the stuff to give anyone who was ill on the Marsh, no matter what the doctor said ... rheumatism, bronchitis, colic, it cured them all.