responsibility, which we felt it would be unsafe, and she thought it would
be unfair, for her to put thus beyond her own reach: "se care of mine
hussbandt."

She wore a plain path across the unpaved street to our house, and another
to our neighbor's. "Sat iss a too great risk," she compassionately
maintained, "to leaf even in se daytime sose shiltren--so late sick--alone
viss only mine hussbandt and se sairvants!"

The doctor was concerned for Mrs. Fontenette from the beginning. "Terribly
nervous," he said, "and full from her feet to her eyes, of a terror of
death--merely a part of the disease, you know." But in this case I did not
know.

"Pathetic," he called the fevered satisfaction she took in the hovering
attentions of our old black nurse, who gave us brief respites in the two
sick-rooms by turns, and who had according to Mrs. Fontenette, "such a
beautiful faith!" The doctor thought it mostly words, among which "de Lawd
willin'" so constantly recurred that out of the sick-room he always
alluded to her as D.V., though never without a certain sincere regard.
This kind old soul had nursed much yellow fever in her time, and it did
not occur to us that maybe her time was past.

When Mrs. Fontenette had been ill something over a week, the doctor one
evening made us glad by saying as he came through the little dining-room
and jerked a thumb back toward Fontenette's door, "Just keep him as he is
for one more night and, I promise you, he'll get well; but!"--He sat down
on the couch--Senda's--in the parlor, and pointed at the door to Mrs.
Fontenette's room--"You've got to be careful _how_ you let even that be
known--in there! She can get well too--if--" And he went on to tell how in