“I am afraid she is worse to-night,” she ventured at last.  I put my hand on the sick girl’s forehead.  It was burning with fever, and I turned to where Thomas lingered in the hallway.

“Will you tell me what you mean, Thomas Johnson, by not telling me this before?” I demanded indignantly.

Thomas quailed.

“Mis’ Louise wouldn’ let me,” he said earnestly.  “I wanted to.  She ought to ‘a’ had a doctor the night she came, but she wouldn’ hear to it.  Is she—­is she very bad, Mis’ Innes?”

“Bad enough,” I said coldly.  “Send Mr. Innes up.”

Halsey came up the stairs slowly, looking rather interested and inclined to be amused.  For a moment he could not see anything distinctly in the darkened room; he stopped, glanced at Rosie and at me, and then his eyes fell on the restless head on the pillow.

I think he felt who it was before he really saw her; he crossed the room in a couple of strides and bent over the bed.

“Louise!” he said softly; but she did not reply, and her eyes showed no recognition.  Halsey was young, and illness was new to him.  He straightened himself slowly, still watching her, and caught my arm.

“She’s dying, Aunt Ray!” he said huskily.  “Dying!  Why, she doesn’t know me!”

“Fudge!” I snapped, being apt to grow irritable when my sympathies are aroused.  “She’s doing nothing of the sort,—­and don’t pinch my arm.  If you want something to do, go and choke Thomas.”

But at that moment Louise roused from her stupor to cough, and at the end of the paroxysm, as Rosie laid her back, exhausted, she knew us.  That was all Halsey wanted; to him consciousness was recovery.  He dropped on his knees beside the bed, and tried to tell her she was all right, and we would bring her around in a hurry, and how beautiful she looked—­only to break down utterly and have to stop.  And at that I came to my senses, and put him out.

“This instant!” I ordered, as he hesitated.  “And send Rosie here.”

He did not go far.  He sat on the top step of the stairs, only leaving to telephone for a doctor, and getting in everybody’s way in his eagerness to fetch and carry.  I got him away finally, by sending him to fix up the car as a sort of ambulance, in case the doctor would allow the sick girl to be moved.  He sent Gertrude down to the lodge loaded with all manner of impossible things, including an armful of Turkish towels and a box of mustard plasters, and as the two girls had known each other somewhat before, Louise brightened perceptibly when she saw her.

When the doctor from Englewood—­the Casanova doctor, Doctor Walker, being away—­had started for Sunnyside, and I had got Thomas to stop trying to explain what he did not understand himself, I had a long talk with the old man, and this is what I learned.