She thanked me profusely, and was really grateful.
On deck next day she was very communicative. They were going to make the
regular tour first, she said, but were to go on to the Tibetan frontier
at the end, where Sir Ivor had a contract to construct a railway, in a
very wild region. Tigers? Natives? Oh, she didn't mind either of THEM;
but she was told that that district--what did they call it? the Terai,
or something--was terribly unwholesome. Fever was what-you-may-call-it
there--yes, "endemic"--that was the word; "oh, thank you, Dr.
Cumberledge." She hated the very name of fever. "Now you, Miss Wade, I
suppose," with an awestruck smile, "are not in the least afraid of it?"
Hilda looked up at her calmly. "Not in the least," she answered. "I have
nursed hundreds of cases."
"Oh, my, how dreadful! And never caught it?"
"Never. I am not afraid, you see."
"I wish _I_ wasn't! Hundreds of cases! It makes one ill to think of
it!... And all successfully?"
"Almost all of them."
"You don't tell your patients stories when they're ill about your other
cases who died, do you?" Lady Meadowcroft went on, with a quick little
shudder.
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