Book Description:
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III WHEN Noll woke it was nearly ten o'clock. The sound of the door bell roused him. He sat up in bed with a start and a flush of guilt. He had heartlessly forgotten the new guest altogether. He was ashamed of himself, especially as it was the doctor whose ring had wakened him. His mother was awake, and had breakfasted. The nurse was a trifle jaded but still alert. Doctor Mitford was coming out of the room by the time Noll was dressed. He asked, anxiously: 'Is she alive?' 'Yes and no.' 'What does that mean?' 'There's no sign of her waking.' 'Drugged?' 'No.' 'What put her to sleep?' 'I wish I knew.' 'How are you going to wake her?' 'I wish I knew.' ' How long will she sleep?' 'How can I tell? It may be for hours, weeks it may forever!' ' I should think she'd starve.' he will if I don't find some way to feed her. If it should be the sleeping sickness, there's little hope. I've been reading that up. It's pretty nearly unknown among Caucasians except by importation from Africa, and it's nearly always fatal. A gradual emaciation ends in death without waking.' Noll's young soul rejected such a possibility as too cruel to be true as if anything imaginable were too cruel to be 'She's not going to die. Something tells me that!' ' Something tells me is hardly a prognosis,' said Mitford. 'But there's nothing to indicate the sleeping sickness. And there's nothing to indicate that she is unconscious from a blow. There's only one other theory left hysteria.' 'Hysteria? Why, I thought when women had hysteria they made a lot of noise and tore their hair and cried and laughed at the same time.' 'Not always. Sometimes they have fits of sleep. They fall into just such a lethargy as this. They grow cold and white; the heart beat i...
|
