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Adela Cathcart, Volume 3 by George MacDonald
page 98 of 207 (47%)
leave of the colonel, and bowed to his patient, receiving a glance of
acknowledgment which could not fail to generate the feeling that there was
a secret understanding between them, and that he had done just what she
wanted. He mounted his roan horse, called Rhubarb, with a certain elation
of being, which he tried to hide from everyone but himself.

When doctors forget that their patients are more like musical instruments
than machines, they will soon need to be reminded that they are men and
women, and not dogs or horses. Yet, alas for the poor dogs and horses that
fall into the hands of a man without a human sympathy even with them! I,
John Smith, bless you, my doctor-friends, that ye are not doctors merely,
but good and loving men; and, in virtue thereof, so much the more--so
exceedingly the more _Therapeutae_.

I need not follow the course of the fever. Each day the arrival of the
cold fit was longer delayed, and the violence of both diminished, until
they disappeared altogether. But a day or two before this happy result was
completed, Adela had been allowed to go down to the drawing-room, and had
delighted her father with her cheerfulness and hopefulness. It really
seemed as if the ague had carried off the last remnants of the illness
under which she had been so long labouring. But then, you can never put
anything to the _experimentum crucis_; and there were other causes at work
for Adela's cure, which were perhaps more powerful than even the ague.
However this may have been, she got almost quite well in a very short
space of time; and with her father's consent, issued invitations to
another meeting of the story-club. They were at once satisfactorily
responded to.



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