He muttered something that sounded like
"Andean pinnacle" and lapsed into unconsciousness again. But he
was not dead! He was not dead!
When the doctor came they made a stretcher out of one of Jim's
six-foot canvases--it had a picture on it, and Jim was angry
enough the next day--and took him down to the studio. We made it
as much like a sick-room as we could, and we tried to make him
comfortable. But he lay without opening his eyes, and at dawn the
doctor brought a consultant and a trained nurse.
The nurse was an offensively capable person. She put us all out,
and scolded Anne for lighting Japanese incense in the
room--although Anne explained that it is very reviving. And she
said that it was unnecessary to have a dozen people breathing up
all the oxygen and asphyxiating the patient. She was
good-looking, too. I disliked her at once. Any one could see by
the way she took his pulse--just letting his poor hand hang,
without any support--that she was a purely mechanical creature,
without heart.
Well, as I said before, she put us all out, and shut the door,
and asked us not to whisper outside. Then, too, she refused to
allow any flowers in the room, although Betty had got a florist
out of bed to order some.
The consultant came, stayed an hour, and left. Aunt Selina, who
proved herself a trump in that trying time, waylaid him in the
hall, and he said it might be a fractured skull, although it was
possibly only concussion.
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