He was a shy little
man, and five days were wasted before he realized that Mrs. Dumoise was burning
with something worse than simple fever, and three days more passed before he
ventured to call on Mrs. Shute, the Engineer's wife, and timidly speak about
his trouble. Nearly every household in India knows that Doctors are very
helpless in typhoid. The battle must be fought out between Death and the
Nurses, minute by minute and degree by degree. Mrs. Shute almost boxed
Dumoise's ears for what she called his "criminal delay," and went off at once
to look after the poor girl. We had seven cases of typhoid in the Station that
winter and, as the average of death is about one in every five cases, we felt
certain that we should have to lose somebody. But all did their best. The women
sat up nursing the women, and the men turned to and tended the bachelors who
were down, and we wrestled with those typhoid cases for fifty-six days, and
brought them through the Valley of the Shadow in triumph. But, just when we
thought all was over, and were going to give a dance to celebrate the victory,
little Mrs. Dumoise got a relapse and died in a week and the Station went to
the funeral. Dumoise broke down utterly at the brink of the grave, and had to
be taken away.
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