to Mrs. Smith and from Mrs. Smith to me, while she whipped her bonnet
ribbons into a bow, she cried, with shaking voice and streaming eyes:

"Oh, sank Kott! sank Kott! it iss only se yellow feveh."



XIV


No sick man could have been better cared for than was the entomologist at
our neighbor's over the way. "The fever," as in the Creole city it used to
be sufficiently distinguished, is not so deadly, nor so treacherous, nor
nearly so repulsive, as some other maladies, but none requires closer
attention. After successive days and nights of unremitting vigilance,
should there occur a momentary closing of the nurse's eyes, or a turning
from the bedside for a quarter of a minute, the irresponsible patient may
attempt to rise and may fall back dying or dead. So, the attendant must
have an attendant. In the case of the entomologist, his wife became the
bedside nurse and sentinel.

In the next room, now and then Mrs. Smith, and now and then our fat
neighbor's wife, waited on her, but by far the most of the time, Mrs.
Fontenette was her assistant. When Senda, while the patient dozed, stole
brief moments of sleep to keep what she could of her overtasked powers,
her place, at the bedside, was always filled by Fontenette, who as often
kept his promise to call her the instant her husband should rouse.

Thus we brought our precious entomologist through the disorder's first
crisis, which generally comes exactly on the seventy-second hour, and in